


Porcelain

by Elisexyz



Series: Porcelain [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dark One Emma Swan, F/M, Swanfire-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-01-06 23:28:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 25,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18398528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elisexyz/pseuds/Elisexyz
Summary: Out of all the places that Baelfire would love to visit while armed with a walking stick and good intentions, a creepy castle in the middle of nowhere is pretty damn low on the list.(Basically a Swanfire Beauty and The Beast AU.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> All this started because of one little scene that I had in mind. And then... it blew out of proportion LOL. Well.  
>    
>  This goes out to my friend (you know who you are) who has never watched an episode of this damn show but still patiently sits through all of my rants and/or oversharing about fics I’m working on (and episodes I re-watch. And posts I find. And feelings I have. Yeah.). I tormented her with this MONTHS ago, then I picked it back up again and I just popped into the chat with her like: “HEY, guess WHAT”.  
>  So, yeah, thank you for supporting my Swanfire problem, love you <3

Out of all the places that Baelfire would love to visit while armed with a walking stick and good intentions, a creepy castle in the middle of nowhere is pretty damn low on the list.

“If we die today, it was nice knowing you,” he mutters to Belle, who merely rolls her eyes at him and precedes him beyond the open gate that signals the beginning of the private – and hopefully abandoned, but Baelfire has never been a particularly _lucky_ guy – property.

The last traces that they found of his father’s passage were around that area, and considering that his cane had been left on the ground, it makes sense that he would seek shelter there, maybe trying to ask for help. Baelfire just hopes that that didn’t end with him eaten alive by some strange creature.

The garden is littered with weird plants that he doesn’t remember ever seeing anywhere else, but he doesn’t waste much time dwelling on it, because he’d rather find his dad and get this whole thing over with. Belle, apparently, shares the sentiment, because she’s all but racing through the garden and soon enough they find themselves in front of a big wooden door – it’s so damn _tall_ that it looks creepier than the castle as a whole, if possible.

Belle tries knocking. “Is anybody home?” she calls, loudly. Baelfire grimly thinks that if someone is waiting inside to eat poor innocent wanderers, they just gave them a big help. “Rumple?” Belle insists, but once again there’s no answer.

“We can try breaking in,” he shrugs, because, well, if something did capture his dad with every intention of eating him he’d much rather _try_ to get him out, at least. Worst case scenario, the whole family gets eaten. Together ‘til the end, right?

Instead of answering, Belle gives him a thoughtful look, then she pushes the door with her full body, and surprisingly enough it works.

“Or that,” Baelfire concedes, preceding her inside.

That damn place is proof that there is no limit to creepiness: the curtains are preventing most of the light from coming in, everything looks _ancient_ and probably haunted, there are big scary stairs that disappear in the dark as you look up— but at least no sign of people-eating monsters. Yet.

“Rumple?” Belle calls again, and her voice echoes through the walls. “Rumple! Are you in here?”

“Maybe he’s upstairs?” Baelfire suggests, although he doesn’t see how he could have managed that without any help. “Should we take a look around?”

They do a quick sweep of the ground floor, only to find nothing and no one, so they end up actually walking up the creaking, creepy stairs.

“Papa?” he calls, loudly, and this time there does seem to be an answer, although it’s too muffled to make out for certain. He exchanges a quick look with Belle before proceeding down the corridor, calling out again while she does the same.

They finally reach what seems like— well, a cell. An actual cell with a solid door and a small window with bars.

“Rumple!” Belle calls, immediately reaching for the bars so that she can interlace her fingers with his. “What happened? Are you alright?”

Baelfire quickly exchanges a glance with him, drawing a sigh of relief when he realizes that he seems to be whole and as healthy as when he left, then he moves to inspecting the lock on the door, wondering if he can find something to pick it.

“I— a woman took me here. I don’t know what for, but— I don’t think you two should stay. Leave, before she realizes you are here.”

“Yeah, yeah, in a minute, after we get you out,” Baelfire mutters, turning around and inspecting the floor for something useful.

“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that,” a voice intervenes from the corridor they came from.

Baelfire quickly turns around, moving a step closer to Belle to have her within reach, for what good that can do: the woman in front of them is as creepy as her home, with white hair, a blank face and dark clothes, and although he is no expert when it comes to magic, he’s fairly sure that she knows a thing or two about that stuff. Growing up where people that powerful are freely walking around, you learn how to pick up on it, particularly when the vibe is that obvious.

“Who are you?” Belle demands, and if she’s afraid it can’t be heard in her voice at all.

“That doesn’t matter,” the woman says, drily. “What matters is that I can’t let you take him away. I’m afraid I need him here.”

“For what?” Baelfire scoffs. “He’s just a spinner, what do you need him for, a new blanket?”

The woman raises her eyebrows, unamused. “He won’t leave,” she repeats. “That’s the son of the Black Fairy, and I need fairy blood. You two must go, but he stays.”

Baelfire blinks, automatically turning towards his father, who looks more than a little shocked at the declaration. “The son of _whom_?” Baelfire echoes.

His dad gives him a mildly panicked look before his attention runs back to the woman. “How do— how can you _know_ that?”

Her expression barely changes as she shrugs. It’s a little unnerving. “I know a lot of things,” she says, simply.

Baelfire is still trying to absorb the fact that apparently his _grandmother_ is the Dark Fairy. The one that the older kids use for spooky stories around the campfires. That’s— wow.

“As I’ve said, I need fairy blood, so you are staying,” the woman repeats.

Baelfire sees her raising her hand, and he doesn’t know if it’s to snap their necks or turn them into roaches or simply send them away, but adrenaline spikes in his body and he’s calling out “Wait!” before he has even formulated a complete thought.

The woman raises her eyebrows questioningly, her hand still mid-air.

“I, uh— you said you need fairy blood, right?” he says, quickly. “I’m his son,” he adds, gesturing behind him. “I have that too, right? Can I stay in his place?”

“Bae!” his dad immediately protests, but Baelfire doesn’t turn around, his eyes focused on the woman, who’s studying him with what he’d dare to call _interest_.

“Yes, you could,” she finally says, slowly.

“Bae! What do you think you are doing?!”

To be honest, he’s not too sure himself. He just knows that there’s no way he’s leaving his dad there alone with a possibly crazy woman who’s most likely a witch. No damn way.

His father’s call goes unanswered as the woman comes up with a piece of paper out of thin air and takes a few steps forward to hand it to him, alongside a pen.

“This is the contract,” she explains. “You sign this, you’ll stay here, and you won’t be allowed to leave until I say otherwise.”

“So— eventually I can leave?” Baelfire asks, because if that’s the case it’s— better than he feared.

“I don’t know,” she answers, her tone completely indifferent. “I suppose I could let you go when I don’t need you anymore— but that might take a very long time.”

Yeah, figures.

Baelfire forces himself to tone out his father calling for him and punching the door with surprising strength as he goes over the contract, mentally thanking Belle for teaching him how to read. Belle who, after standing silently beside him that whole time, grabs his arm, waiting until he raises his eyes on her face to speak.

“You don’t have to do this,” she says, in a whisper. “We can find another way.”

He swallows, adverting his eyes. Who knows, maybe they could. Or maybe not. But he knows that whatever that woman needs them for, he probably has a better chance of surviving it than his dad. Not to mention, a better chance at running away. The whole probably magical contract makes that a problem, but— if he has to choose which one of them waits there while the other stays outside wracking their brain but out of harm’s way, it’s an easy pick.

“I’m sure you’ll look for it,” he smiles, his eyes moving back to Belle’s face. She has spent more than two years living with them now, and although she’s not exactly his mother they have become good friends. He’s sorry to do this to her, to _them_. “I’ll wait here in the meantime.”

She looks like she isn’t sure if she wants to scold him or cry, and her grip on his arm tightens.

His father is still trying to get his attention, and Baelfire has to force himself not to turn around, because he _knows_ that if he did he’d crumble: it’s been just the two of them for so _long_ , and although their life has been more than a little crappy, the one comfort he always had was his father, the fact that he was never alone through it. His papa never left him. Now Baelfire is doing exactly _that_ , he’s abandoning him, and the only consolation he can find is that at least he’ll have Belle.

“You _drag_ him home if necessary, okay?” he tells her, his voice strained.

Belle stares at him with glassy eyes for a few seconds before nodding. She eases the grip on his arm, then she lets go completely.

He signs, as quickly as he can, and he hands the contract back to the woman, who makes it disappear in a second.

“Very well,” she says. With a simple gesture, the door behind him opens, loudly, and his father almost falls over. Both him and Belle catch him, and it’s too late to turn back when Baelfire realizes that now he’s forced to look at him in the eyes and to be on the receiving end of the most pained expression he’s ever seen on his dad’s face.

“I’m sorry—” Baelfire begins, unsure of what else to say, but he’s interrupted.

“You say your goodbyes now, then the two of you go to never return,” the woman announces, drily. “If you try to leave—” she adds, staring at Baelfire. He feels his father digging his nails in his shoulder as he tries to stand up and pull him towards him at the same time. “—I’ll know.”

A second later, she’s gone. Another second, and Baelfire feels something cold gripping his stomach and squeezing it tight before twisting it on itself, until it’s upside down and his heart is jumping in his throat.

The three of them appear by the front door, in the exact same position they were in front of the cell.

For a few moments, they are all too stunned to move, then Baelfire catches sight of the cane on the floor and he silently reaches for it, before handing it to his dad, eyes on the ground.

He accepts it, just as silently.

“I’m sorry,” Baelfire repeats, quietly. He waits a few seconds before raising his eyes, and no, he definitely did _not_ need to see the tears. The feeling is worse than disappearing and reappearing out of thin air.

“Bae—” he says, his voice breaking as he moves forward and reaches for cheek. “We can take it back— we can— _I_ can stay.”

Baelfire shakes his head, automatically reaching for his waist to offer support. “It’s better like this, alright? Whatever she wants to do, I can take it, and she’ll let me go afterwards.” _Hopefully_.

He opens his mouth to protest, but nothing seems to come out.

“Just trust me, okay?” Baelfire says then, doing a better job than he would have thought at pretending to know what the hell he’s doing.

His dad hugs him like it’s the last time – well, it might be – and he’s trying to pull him close enough to blend together and not let him stay. He doesn’t let go until after Belle has gotten her hug too and she pulls away with a few meaningless recommendations, making good on her silent promise and basically dragging his father away from him.

Baelfire watches them, and even after the door has closed behind them – _on its own_ – he keeps staring at it, still a little disoriented and not really managing to make his brain grasp the _enormity_ of what he just did.

He’s alone, trapped with a psychotic witch in a creepy castle, and there’s a chance that he’ll never see his family again. He may spend the rest of his days in a tiny cell, and as he thinks about that suddenly those last few moments seem to have lasted nowhere near long enough.

To avoid his self-control abandoning him and allowing him to throw that door open and run after them, foolish as that may be, he takes a few steps back, tearing his eyes away and taking a quick look around: he seems to be alone.

“Uh, hey—” he calls, hesitantly. “Miss? You there?” He isn’t sure if he’s all that enthusiastic about coming face to face with her again, but as far as he knows she is the only other person in that place, and he’d like to know what he should expect from his not too brilliant future, so—

“I’m here,” she announces, making him jump out of his skin as she walks out of a dark corner on his right.

So she was spying the whole time. Great, that’s just— great.

“Woah, okay,” he lets out, a little out of breath as he comes up with a nervous laugh. “Okay. Not creepy _at all_.” He pauses, and she doesn’t fill the silence, merely staring at him. “So, uh, what should I call you?” he ends up asking, and, well, it probably wasn’t the most important thing he had to ask, but it’s a start. She’s intimidating, with that blank face and the general creepiness.

“Excuse me?”

“I mean, I don’t think you want me to ‘Miss’ at you all the time, right?”

There’s a pause, which Baelfire uses to wonder how much conversation they’ll actually have. He isn’t sure if he’d rather die in solitude or have the company of anybody in there, even if it’s _her_.

“I am the Dark One,” she finally says, drily.

Baelfire blinks. “Yeah, okay,” he snorts, nervously. “But that’s— _weird_. Like— do I _seriously_ have to call you _the Dark One_ every time? Does it really not sound weird to you? _The Dark One_.”

She looks at him like he’s a particularly annoying bug flying around her head, and for a second there he thinks she’ll incinerate him.

“Alright. _Fine_ ,” she says instead. “Emma will do. But if you don’t stop with the attitude I will throw you in your father’s cell and I’ll gag you, understood?”

Baelfire opens his mouth to answer, then he closes it again. “That’s— not where I’m staying?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the second chapter! Thank you all for the support on the first one <3

He’s got a _bedroom_.

He’s still trying to wrap his head around it, but Emma _actually_ led him to a real _bedroom_. Well, it’s dusty and gloomy and it smells like it hasn’t been used in a couple of decades, but it isn’t a tiny cell. He— didn’t see that one coming.

Emma, upon noticing his surprise, simply points out that considering that per contract he isn’t allowed to leave there’s no reason to stash him in a cell instead of a bedroom. He can appreciate the courtesy, and he makes sure to say as much – thanking his captor for being decent is rich, but it sure as hell can’t hurt –, even as he wonders what exactly would happen if he broke said contract. She can’t always be around, can she?

“You don’t want to leave, trust me,” Emma says, with a pointed look.

Baelfire can’t supress a rattled expression. “You read minds?” he asks, more than a little uncomfortable with the idea. If he can’t even have some _privacy_ —

“No,” she announces, after a very deliberate pause. There’s the tiniest hint of a smirk on her face, and, well, at least now he knows that she _theoretically_ can smile. “Just a lucky guess.”

“Uh, okay. Got me there,” he grins nervously, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. He wouldn’t be surprised if breaking a contract with the ‘Dark One’ resulted into a very slow and painful execution. Not to mention that after _that_ she’d go after his father again.

No leaving it is, then.

Emma quickly goes back to her creepy expression completely void of human emotion. “You can poke around as much as you like when you are not needed,” she explains, crossing her arms. “With the obvious exception of locked doors. If it’s locked, you aren’t meant to access it, clear?”

“Crystal,” he assures, smiling as innocently as he can. He’s good at picking locks, although, given that he’s dealing with a witch, chances are that everything will be boobytrapped and he’d lose a limb for merely approaching the door in question. He’s a curious idiot, but not _that_ much of an idiot.

Emma leaves him with a curt nod, and the first thing that Baelfire does is closing the door behind her. Considering that he’s walking around in the semi-darkness, he then proceeds to open the curtains, which allows him to discover that he has a pretty breath-taking view of the garden and the forest.

He has always lived in a small house near the woods, no second floor, definitely no view— this is excitingly _new_ , and for a second he forgets exactly what kind of situation he’s in.

Then, of course, it all falls right back on his shoulders, and he can’t help wondering if Belle managed to drag his dad back home, and how they are doing. He’s fairly sure that Belle is holding up, mostly because his father in all likelihood _isn’t_.

God, what did he do?

He spends some time lying on his bed, his eyes scanning every stain on the ceiling as he thinks back to how much has happened in an handful of minutes, and it kinda says a _lot_ that the least of his worries is that he has discovered that he has fairy blood in his veins. He wonders if his dad had any intention of ever telling him, but other than that? It’s much more troubling that Emma needs it for _something_ , that he’s in way over his head, that he just _left_ his family, that he might never see them again— he guesses that he’s more similar to his mother than he’s ever cared to admit.

Sure, he has a much better excuse than ‘A hot pirate offered me to see the world, how could I refuse?’, but for a minute there it doesn’t feel different at all. He _resents_ her, and he wonders if his dad will come to resent him just as strongly.

To avoid drowning in self-pity, he decides to get up and take a look around his new residence: he’ll have to learn how to move around there without getting lost anyway, won’t he?

 

The place is _big_.

Only on his floor he finds a giant library – Belle would love it, he can’t help thinking –, which at least means that he’ll have something to pass the time while he waits to know if he has to sacrifice a limb for the witch’s weird potions, a locked door _in_ the library – as soon as he realizes that it’s locked he takes a deliberate step back, waiting for some curse to fall upon him and burn him alive or something –, a few empty bedrooms – the one he was given is the biggest though –, a room full of old furniture and other dusty items, a couple of locked doors.

He decides that, given that he has a lot of time on his hands and he’ll likely go crazy if he spends it _thinking_ , he’ll explore the rest of the castle later, or tomorrow, and he’ll distract himself with some books.

He’s still not as fast as Belle when it comes to reading, but in this case it’s an advantage, because the harder the process the more time it takes, and the more concentration it requires the less he’s allowed to _think_.

He has carefully picked a book that doesn’t involve much talk about magic, considering that the subject doesn’t exactly make him feel at _ease_ at the moment – it’s always been pretty intimidating, but right now it’s just _not_ something that he’d like to dwell on, thank you very much –, and he’s ended up with a testimonial on the Ogre Wars. Not really an happy subject, but still.

He’s well into it when Emma suddenly appears in front of him in a puff of smoke, giving him a stroke.

“What—?” he lets out, jumping on his seat and almost dropping the book.

“Follow me,” she orders, drily, turning her back on him without giving him the time to reply.

Baelfire, with his heart still stuck in his throat, decides that he’d better comply.

She takes him to a room that he’s pretty sure was locked before, and if he had to picture the working place of a crazy witch ready to skin him alive— yeah, that would probably be it.

There are potions that emanate strange smells, weirdly shaped objects that he’s pretty sure he doesn’t want to touch— and the curtains are closed, obviously. What’s with the aesthetic, really?

Emma stops in front of a bowl with unfamiliar writings carved on it, and she hands him a knife.

“Slash your palm and bleed in here until I tell you to stop,” she says, like it’s absolutely normal.

Well, at least he gets to keep all his limbs, apparently.

“Sure,” he mumbles, and if she notices the hint of sarcasm in his voice she doesn’t comment on it.

He hesitates before _cutting himself right open_ , because, well, it’s not something that you are _supposed_ to do, but he manages, gritting his teeth through the burning pain and feeling a little sick when they both stare at his blood dripping in the bowl.

“That’s enough,” she announces, and he’s quick to snatch his hand away.

“Uh, do you have something for…?” he asks, trailing off with a brief gesture at his hand, which is bleeding all over.

Emma rolls her eyes, gesturing for him to offer his hand instead. He tentatively does, and a second later she has wiped away any sign that a cut was ever there. Well, except for the bloodstains on his sleeve.

“Oh. Thanks,” he says, looking at his palm like he’s never seen it before and feeling a little weirded out by the fact that she just performed magic on him.

“That would be all,” she announces, glancing at the door in a clear invitation to make himself scarce.

He doesn’t need to be asked twice: the less time he spends in her creepy room for experiments, the happier he’ll be.

 

 

When he starts getting hungry, he decides to go downstairs, where he remembers seeing a kitchen as he looked around with Belle.

It’s much bigger than what he had at home – which was a very poor excuse for a kitchen anyway –, and he probably doesn’t know how to use half of the stuff in there, but he’ll have to manage: Emma surely doesn’t strike him as the kind of person who’d give him an hand with the cooking. Thinking about it, does she even _eat?_ He can’t picture it.

With a little pocking around, he manages to find what he needs to make what hopefully will be a pretty decent soup. His dad has always been better than him at those, but he thinks he can manage _decent_. Hopefully. Emma wouldn’t let him die of food poisoning anyway, right? She sort of needs him alive.

She walks in when he isn’t even close to done.

“Uh, hey,” he says, thankful that for once she used the door like a normal person instead of appearing out of thin air and scaring the crap out of him. “Do you— do you want some?”

She raises her eyebrows questioningly, and, well, he feels pretty dumb for asking, but that’s the polite thing to do and since he’s stuck there they’d better try and get along. The less of a pain in the ass he is, the more likely she’ll be to be kind enough to let him go once she’s done, right?

“I’m making soup,” he explains, with a shrug. “I’m no expert, but it should be decent. Do you want some?” _Do you even_ eat _?_

Emma blinks at him, and maybe he should take that as a sign of surprise. “Alright,” she finally says, her tone blank. “The table will be set when you are done,” she announces, before— disappearing in a puff of smoke. Obviously.

 

 

There’s a soup, a ridiculously long dinner table, the son of a spinner and the witch who keeps him under lock and key – metaphorically, at least.

That must be the weirdest version of a family meal ever imagined.

The soup is, thankfully, decent. No food poisoning in sight. Still, the silence is so awkward that he’s kind of hoping he’ll choke on it anyway.

“So—” he begins, deciding that taking the suicidal route and trying to make small talk is much better than going on like that. “—what do you do for a living?”

Emma seems to be caught by surprise, which leaves him time to be mildly amused before she decides to concede him an answer. “Contracts. People want things, I provide them. For a price.”

“Like their souls?” he jokes. Or, at least, half-jokes.

She rolls her eyes. “Not usually.”

That’s not a ‘no’, but he’ll take it. He gets the feeling that she’s just messing with him anyway. The Dark One might just have a bit of sense of humour, who would have thought?

“Doesn’t it pay enough to have some sunlight in here?” he jokes, without thinking.

She raises her eyebrows. “Excuse me?”

“The, uh, the curtains,” he gestures vaguely, wondering if he just made a big mistake. It’d probably be wise to stop forgetting that he’s dealing with a witch who could snap him in a half with the imposition of a finger. “They’re all closed.”

Emma shrugs. “People are scared of the dark.”

“Okay, I get the whole aesthetic you got going on, it’s— _effective_ — but while there aren’t any visitors it’d be nice to see where I’m going, you know?”

She shakes her head a little, sighing. “Very well,” she announces, and with a gesture the curtains are open and he can actually _see_ what he’s eating – it looks better than he’d feared, honestly.

“Oh, thanks.” He wasn’t really expecting her to comply so easily.

She’s soon done with her food, and she leaves without saying goodbye.

 

 

Baelfire is no stranger to rough nights: he’s lucky enough not to have been born in times of war, he’s perfectly aware of that, but he’s had some rough patches anyway, and he’s had fairly frequent nightmares throughout his life.

Some were about his mother, especially back when he still believed her to be dead, some were about the ogres coming back to ruin their family more than they already had, some were about his dad and how _defenceless_ he was, compared to all those people who saw him as nothing more than dirt to step on.

When he was little, Baelfire would crawl into his papa’s bed and fight the fear off that way. Growing up, he started calming himself down, sometimes getting up to stretch his legs, hoping that his dad’s bad leg wasn’t keeping him awake too that particular night.

He doesn’t remember clearly what it is that he was dreaming this time, but when he wakes it takes him a moment to realize where he is and why, and he finds it even more difficult than usual to calm himself down, because, well, he woke up, but he isn’t safe. He isn’t at home.

The good thing about being kept prisoner in a giant castle, though, is that he can take an _actual_ walk to clear his head, before trying to go back to sleep – he isn’t sure how likely _that_ is to work out, but still.

Walking around the corridor, masochistically trying to remember what the hell he was dreaming about, he sees a faint light coming out from one of the doors. Now, there’s only one other person living there, and she’s a witch. If she has waited until the middle of the night to do something, he should probably stay out of it. Especially considering that he’s pretty sure that _that_ room was locked during the day.

Still, it isn’t locked now, is it? And, well, he _is_ a curious idiot.

What he finds is considerably less horrifying that the sacrificial rituals he had imagined: Emma is leaning back on an armchair, working on— he isn’t sure what that is. Maybe one of those things that are supposed to trap nightmares? He’s seen a guy sell some of those, once, he thinks.

“It was my understanding that humans require sleep,” Emma comments, without raising her eyes on him.

Baelfire is caught by surprise at the sound of her voice, but he recovers quickly. “Uh, yeah,” he replies, taking a discreet look around the room: it seems normal, why the hell was it locked during the day? “Just a rough night. I was taking a walk.”

“Fascinating.”

“You are awake too.”

“I don’t sleep.”

He opens his mouth to answer, but he’s too taken aback for anything to come right out. “Ever?” he finally asks.

She raises her eyes on him, her expression blank. “Ever. I don’t need it.”

“Oh, well, good for you,” he resolves to say. Although he’d probably go crazy if he had even _more_ time to occupy in his day, needing sleep and not managing to get it _sucks_.

His eyes fall on something in the corner of the room.

“Is that a spinning wheel?” he asks, an hint of a smile twisting his lips.

“It is. Why?” Emma replies, with an expression that’s just slightly different from the blank one but that in his opinion is a _little_ closer to surprise.

“Can I use it?” he lets out, before he can think any better of it. Spinning is a job, and it’s not like he’s particularly _fond_ of it in itself, but his dad taught him how to spin, they’ve spent hours doing it, and it’s what he often does when he wakes up in the middle of the night because of his bad leg acting up. Baelfire has left him, but maybe that can make him feel like his dad isn’t so out of reach.

Emma shrugs. “I surely don’t.”

When she raises her hand, he expects her to puff both him and the spinning wheel out of the room, but instead she moves it where it’s more comfortable to use, and she provides him with what he needs to work.

“Suit yourself,” she adds, before going back to her own work.

They barely talk for the next few hours, but it’s the calmest Baelfire has felt since when he set foot in that castle.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is me posting from beyond the grave. The cause of death was Silver777Tongue [making absolutely stunning fanart inspired by this fic](https://silver777tongue.tumblr.com/post/184916979264/porcelain-out-of-all-the-places-that-baelfire). I just. days later, still screaming about it. It's beautiful, check it out! ~~(Yes, I had to be dramatic about it)~~  
>   
>  Thank you all so much for all the support in the second chapter, I hope you'll enjoy this one too <3

The most disturbing thing about his permanence in Emma’s castle is that they end up falling into a _routine_.

He finds that cooking occupies some of his time, so he starts doing it both for him and Emma. After all, he’s already doing it, so why not make double portions? She seems to appreciate it, and she has been talking to him a little more, which cannot be a bad thing, considering that they are completely alone in there and he needs some human – or close enough to human, at least – interaction.

They eat their meals together, and if at first she clearly had breakfast while he was still sound asleep, now she has started waiting until he’s functional enough to crawl downstairs.

While Emma is out collecting people’s souls – it’s become sort of a running joke between the two of them, and by now he’s fairly sure that she doesn’t actually do that; he’s not _completely_ sure, but close enough –, he usually reads, or cleans up around. He’s never been a big fan of house chores, but one has to pass the time somehow, so he started with his room and then he got permission from Emma to do whatever the hell he wants with the rest, so long as he doesn’t break anything and he keeps out of locked rooms.

When he can’t sleep, by now he doesn’t even hesitate to get up and go to the not-so-locked-anymore room where Emma is always making dreamcatchers – that’s what she said they are called: they are meant to capture nightmares, but they also have magical properties that she wouldn’t go into detail about, apparently.

He has found out that she doesn’t even lock it during the day anymore, and he isn’t sure what that means.

Spinning is relaxing: it brings him closer to his dad, and although while they sit there in silence sometimes his throat closes up and he starts feeling a little claustrophobic in that giant prison, overwhelmed by the need to run back home, he finds that making some small talk actually helps.

Which is _ridiculous_ , because Emma is the one keeping him away from his family in the first place.

When he starts thinking about how utterly wrong it is that his average day is not even that bad, a crushing feeling of guilt overcomes him, because he _knows_ that his dad is out there desperately looking for a way to get him back, that he feels like he should have done something to keep him from throwing away his life, that Belle is keeping up a brave face to help him through it, but she’s also spending too many hours trying to come up with a loophole to get him out of his deal. They are out there, suffering the consequences of his choices, and he sits there having _dinner_ with the witch who caused this.

Honestly, it’s sort of a relief when she asks for some more blood and he can remember that he’s basically there as a walking potion ingredient.

 

 

He’s cleaning up what he supposes is a storage room: there are all kinds of furniture and objects, and he has every intention of putting anything he likes in his room, after he’s done cleaning it all up.

It’s really, _really_ funny that he’s doing chores out of his own volition: although their house was really small, he hated helping with that, especially because he felt guilty making his father walk around when it wasn’t necessary, so he ended up doing most of it on his own. When Belle arrived, he was shamelessly enthusiastic about having someone to share the workload with.

Boredom is a really powerful motivator, apparently.

He finds a box engraved with weird symbols that he doesn’t bother analysing, and he isn’t sure what he could use it _for_ , but he likes it, so he might just bring it to his bedroom. Maybe Emma will give him a ‘one year as a prisoner, congratulations!’ medal that he’ll be able to put in there, who knows.

Now, in retrospect, opening up weird boxes in a witch’s house is not a smart move. But, in his defence, it seemed rather innocuous: small box, golden decorations, no weird sounds or smells coming out of it, it wasn’t even _heavy_ , or _locked_ , he was reasonably sure that it was empty.

It obviously _isn’t_ , because when he opens it up something comes out of it: it’s dark, vaguely human-shaped, and it looks like it’s made of dust. It has red burning eyes, just in case someone wasn’t sure about that thing _not_ being friendly, and it makes a weird growling sound as it comes out of the box and it towers over him.

“ _Shit_ —”

He scrambles to stand up and get the hell out of there, even though he isn’t too sure that a door would do much to stop that thing from following him, but he isn’t even given a chance to _try_ , because it’s way faster than he is and it manages to grab him and keep him in place.

A second later, he feels a burning pain all over his body, and he’s fairly sure that that thing is trying to rip his skin off.

As he clumsily tries to pull away – he isn’t even sure how effective he’s being, or if he’s putting any real strength in it all, because it’s hard to think while his brain is too panicked and busy agonizing to help him out, and all he can hear is a very insisting _ringing_ sound –, he isn’t sure what makes him come up with that idea, if it’s just instinct because this is all _her_ fault after all, or if he’s just desperate enough to reach out to the only person who could possibly help, but he ends up yelling: “Emma!”

She isn’t even _there_ , but once he has come up with that he just keeps going, calling her name a couple more times and just praying that she’ll somehow hear.

What feels like an eternity later, there’s a real, _human_ hand grabbing his arm, pulling him up as he sways on his feet, and although he’s seeing double he’s pretty sure he caught sight of that thing being snatched back into its tiny box.

The silence that’s fallen now that he can’t hear anymore ringing is just as disorienting as the sudden absence of pain, and he has to hold onto Emma to avoid falling like a ton of bricks, because everything _spins_ , his knees are buckling and he can’t seem to be able to get enough air in his lungs.

“That was _really_ stupid,” Emma comments, and it takes him a few extra seconds to register her voice, let alone what she’s said.

He’s never, _ever_ touching anything in that damn castle again.

She shifts and grabs him with both hands, to better keep him upright, and he isn’t sure what in her gestures suggested she would, but he feels a sudden rush of panic at the thought that she might magic them out of there.

“Please, don’t puff me anywhere,” he quickly says, and it probably sounds a little whiny, but he’s pretty sure that he would puke his soul out if she did it.

Emma sighs heavily, but next thing he knows she is supporting him as they walk to his room. She drops him, a little unceremoniously, on his bed, and at least the world is starting to seem stable again, and he feels like breathing comes a little more easily.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I was in the middle of something,” she says, but she doesn’t sound particularly annoyed. “Don’t touch _anything_ this time.”

He snorts. “No need to tell me.”

There’s a pause, then she adds: “I’ll make sure that there’s nothing else like that lying around. Later.” A second later, she’s gone.

Baelfire is a little too emotionally exhausted to dwell on the fact that she just offered to make sure to get rid of anything else that might try to kill him, right after saving his life, and he soon drifts into a thankfully dreamless sleep – more accurately, he probably just passes right out.

 

When he comes to, he feels like he just got ran over by a couple of carriages, but he’s had worse days. It takes him a few moments to notice that he isn’t alone.

“What— _god_ ,” he breaths out, jumping in a sitting position as his heart threatens to tear through his chest and Emma just looks at him, leaning against the wall in front of his bed, like it’s completely _normal_. “You scared the crap out of me,” he protests, taking a sharp breath.

She doesn’t seem to be too concerned about having considerably shortened his lifespan, though.

“I took care of it, there shouldn’t be anything potentially lethal within your reach,” she announces, which kind of makes him feel like a baby, considering what she just said is that she made the place non-magical-idiot-proof.

 _Then_ he remembers his uncomfortably close call, and his stomach twists on itself. Right.

“Thanks,” he says, although he thinks he’ll avoid touching anything suspicious for a while anyway. “What the hell was that?”

“A Shadow,” she supplies, neutrally. “It was trying to rip off _your_ shadow.”

He blinks. “That’s—that’s a thing?”

“There are few things that magic can’t do,” she comments, with an odd expression on her face. She quickly adverts her eyes, and he wonders what he’s missing there.

“Great,” he says, putting a pin on it: he isn’t in the mood to read between the lines right now. “Will I randomly drop dead in a few hours?”

She shrugs. “Unlikely.”

“That isn’t an hard no, but I’ll take it.”

After all, he already got lucky once today, he can only hope that the universe will keep loving him for a little while longer.

 

 

He isn’t sure what _hovering_ is supposed to look like in someone like Emma: he’s used to his dad, who just doesn’t bother to hide his concern at all, makes sure to thoroughly inspect him for wounds if he suspects he’s been hurt, hugs him tightly and asks if he’s okay every five seconds, and to Belle, who is less _insisting_ about it, but still doesn’t hide anything.

Baelfire can’t say with certainty that Emma is hovering, but sure enough when he decides that he doesn’t want to spend another second in bed and that he’d much rather get some food instead, she doesn’t leave him to it as she usually does.

Instead, she hangs around the kitchen, and he can _feel_ her staring the whole damn time. It’s more than a little unnerving, and it’s distracting enough that at some point he seemingly forgets how to coordinate his limbs and he almost loses his balance.

Next thing he knows, Emma is standing right next to him.

“Uh, I’m fine,” he says, awkwardly, under her perfectly serious and impenetrable gaze. “I was just tripping.”

She nods, but she doesn’t move to stand that far away.

“You know, if you are going to stay here you can help,” he finally points out, pretty damn desperate to get her eyes off him.

She doesn’t seem too enthusiastic at the idea, but in the end she nods.

Which is how he ends up cooking dinner with the Dark One. That’s a whole new level of weird.

 

 

Believe it or not, almost dying doesn’t prompt him to sleep particularly well at night. Or to sleep at all.

Considering that every time he tries to close his eyes he can’t help reliving the not exactly pleasant feeling of having something try to rip a part of him off – his _shadow;_ because apparently shadows can be ripped off, that’s a thing, okay –, he starts shivering in horror and he’s suddenly very much awake, he soon decides to let it go and just go pass the time at the spinning wheel.

After all, him passing out in the middle of the day totally counts as sleeping, so he isn’t missing out on much.

Emma is there, as always.

Whenever he comes in, she usually doesn’t even acknowledge him with a look: he goes to his spot and she’ll just answer if he feels like making some conversation. This time, as soon as he appears on the door she raises her eyes on him, giving him a quick onceover before going back to her work.

He decides not to comment on it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~~I mean. of course I was going to jump head first into the damsel in distress cliché.~~


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the next chapter! Thank you so much for all the support, I hope you'll enjoy this one too <3

Having lunch alone is depressing. Not to mention, it encourages overthinking: if he’s eating alone and he doesn’t like it, it means that he would prefer it if Emma were there right now, which is just very messed up and feels completely unfair towards the family he left behind.

Emma is obviously not _all_ bad: she saved his life, for one, she keeps him company if nothing else, but she’s also a powerful and dangerous witch who squeezes blood out of him and keeps him trapped in a castle with a contract that he probably doesn’t want to break. God knows what it is that she’s trying to do: for all he knows he might be aiding her in a plot to take over the world.

It’s difficult to reconcile all that, and she doesn’t help matters when she acts so _decent_. Sometimes he gets the crazy feeling that she actually _likes_ having him around.

Be it as it may, he doesn’t like sitting alone at a long table in a giant, silent castle – to solve half of that problem, he decides to eat in the kitchen instead, since it’s smaller than the dining room.

He hears the sound of human activity in the other room when he’s about to finish his meal, so he makes sure to get it over with as quickly as possible, because messed up or not he needs to talk with someone that isn’t himself.

“Hey, how did—?” He stops dead on his tracks as soon as he catches sight of Emma: he has no idea what it is that she went out to do, but it seems to have gone a little side-ways. Or more than _a little_ side-ways. “Okay, that— doesn’t look great,” he comments, slowly.

He has never seen her with so much as a _papercut_ , and yet there she stands, half-covered in blood and more than a little banged-up. How the hell is she still standing upright?

“It’ll heal,” she says, drily, putting a box on the table – he absolutely will _not_ get anywhere near that, weird boxes trigger traumatic memories.

“I thought you were basically invulnerable,” he comments, slowly walking closer. She doesn’t seem like she’s about to _die_ , but those are pretty impressive wounds. Seriously, how is she still standing?

She snorts. “I most definitely am not.”

“What is it that did that?” he asks, before he can think any better of his curiosity.

“I fought a dragon,” she announces, with the hint of a smug grin on her face. “I won.”

She then opens the box to reveal—

“Is that a _heart?”_ he lets out, pretty sure that his jaw is about to hit the floor. “Like, an actual beating heart?”

“It is. It’s an ingredient,” she explains, closing the box once again and looking pleased. “And if your next question is going to be ‘for what?’, don’t bother asking.”

He snorts. As if he didn’t know that she’ll never even _hint_ at what it is that she’s trying to do.

“So— you’re good?” he ends up asking instead, with a vague gesture at her whole frame. She did bother making sure that he didn’t die when it was his turn, it’s probably decent of him to at least _ask_. And, well, that looks _bad_ , it’s bugging him more than he would have guessed.

He isn’t crazy, he doesn’t like to see people in pain, alright?

“If you’re hoping that I’ll drop dead, Dark Ones don’t die. It’ll heal,” she announces, and Baelfire finds himself taking more than a little offense at that. He was there, asking how she was doing, and she accuses him of wishing her dead. Really charming.

“ _Alright_ , I was just trying to ask if you were okay, but whatever,” he mutters, crossing his arms. “There’s food left, if you are hungry,” he announces, and this time he’s the one to walk away without waiting for an answer.

_He_ ate on his own, she is going to have to do the same. Screw her.

 

 

After spending some time living with someone, you begin to form some _expectations:_ you learn how they act, and you don’t expect them to do anything different for no reason.

Emma is not much of a talker, she has the bad habit of appearing out of thin air instead of using doors like normal people, she has one facial expression – two at most – that changes slightly for communication purposes, she’s creepy without even trying, and he’s never heard her offer a ‘thank you’ or an apology. Like, ever. Not even a polite ‘Thanks’ for the food, or a ‘Sorry’ for scaring the crap out of him when she appears out of the blue. Manners? What are those?

So, it’s safe to say that he’s very surprised when not only she doesn’t just conjure herself right in his room, but she _knocks_ on the open door before entering.

“Uh, yeah?” he says, taken aback, putting down his book and moving to sit on the bed.

She still has blood all over the place, and he wonders what the hell she has been doing up until now if she hasn’t even bothered getting cleaned up a little.

“I didn’t mean that as an offence,” she announces, and if he didn’t know any better he’d say she looks a little hesitant. “You were kind enough to ask how I was doing, and I shouldn’t have called that into question. If I have upset you, I apologize.”

“Oh. Okay,” he mumbles, completely at loss of words. She just _apologized_. It was a bit solemn, but still. “I— uh, alright.” He clears his throat. “Apology accepted. It’s fine.”

She nods, taking a step back and moving to walk away. He stops her without even thinking.

“Hey, hold on,” he says, automatically pushing himself towards the edge of the bed. “Do you need help with—?” He makes a vague gesture at her whole frame. “I can help you clean up.”

She raises her eyebrows. “I can manage,” she assures, but it doesn’t sound all that firm. She probably wasn’t expecting that, and, honestly, neither was Baelfire.

“Yeah, I know,” he shrugs, a little uncomfortable. “I just thought— you carried me to bed the last time, it’s only fair, you know?”

Emma stares at him in silence for a few seconds, then she nods. “Very well,” she says, curtly. She then turns right around, expecting him to scramble out of bed and follow her, as per usual. That’s one damn annoying habit.

 

 

He’s gotta admit, she’s a good patient: she doesn’t make a single sound, she doesn’t pull away, she just lets him do what he needs to without getting in the way.

“You know, that’s the first time I’ve heard you apologize for something,” he comments, because apparently he’s feeling a little suicidal. At this point, though, he’s beginning to seriously think that he doesn’t have much to fear from her.

Besides the whole ‘keeping him prisoner’ thing. Details.

She raises her eyebrows. “Words are powerful,” she simply says. “People use them all too carelessly.”

“Woah, okay,” he snorts, amused: sometimes it’s hard to believe that someone could look perfectly normal and be centuries old, then she comes up with those pieces of wisdom and it suddenly makes a little too much sense. “Don’t make me feel dumb now.”

“You are enough of a moron without me getting involved.”

For a second there, she looks almost affectionate.

 

 

-

 

 

“You have been reading a lot about pirates,” Emma comments, one night when Baelfire is once again trying to get worn out – or relaxed, whichever comes first – enough to get some decent sleep.

These days, sometimes she’s the one to start the conversation. It’s beginning to feel almost normal.

“Uh, yeah,” he shrugs. He’s a little surprised that she has taken notice: they do talk about what he’s reading at a given moment, and pretty often, because it makes for good small talk and her weird insights are entertaining as hell, but he didn’t think she’d care enough to keep a mental tally. “I kinda got history with one of those.”

“What kind of history?”

He hesitates, surprised by her interest: although she has been talking much more than in the beginning, she still isn’t too prone to asking much about him, or his life. It’s rare for her to display curiosity like that, and he isn’t sure where it’s coming from.

Nevertheless, talking helps with the nerves, even if the subject isn’t something that he particularly enjoys talking about, so he’ll roll with it.

“My mother ran out on us when I was a kid,” he explains, and although he likes to think that he has gotten over it, mostly, it still _stings_. It stings that one of the two people who were supposed to love him unconditionally and above all else would just run away like that, with no explanation or goodbye. “I thought she had died for a long time, but turns out that she ran away with a pirate.”

“An— interesting choice,” Emma comments, slowly. She’s still focused on her work, but he can see it in the line of her jaw that she isn’t all that approving. He finds himself sort of appreciating the validation.

“I don’t think she and my dad were a very good match,” he comments, lightly. That _is_ true: he was just a kid at the time, but he does remember that his mother screamed a lot, that she was _out_ a lot, and that his parents fought often. “Either way, I found out the truth when her pirate lover decided that it’d be a good idea to kidnap fourteen-year-old me and bring me to his ship as a present for my mother.”

At that, Emma’s head snaps up. “Come again?”

He shrugs. “I woke up tied on the deck to him discussing his questionable methods with her. It was a bit of a shock, not gonna lie.”

“They then decided to bring you back?”

“Eventually,” he grins. “As soon as they freed me, I tried to stab the guy— I wasn’t all that good with a sword, but I did put in my best effort. His name is Captain Hook, because he has a hook for an hand, I think that gave him an unfair advantage.” He doesn’t think that trying to stab the captain of the ship he was on at the time was a particularly good idea, but he maintains that it was worth a try, and his mother didn’t let anybody get anywhere near him anyway. Say what you will about her, but she didn’t want him to die, at least. “They brought me back when they caught me trying to sneak out on a boat in the middle of the night.”

Emma raises her eyebrows. “Did you know how to navigate?”

“I did not have a clue,” he laughs.

She offers the slightest hint of a smile, but she’s quick to drop it.

“Parents shouldn’t abandon their kids,” she comments, grimly.

He feels his own grin dying out, and he takes a sharp breath. “No, they really shouldn’t,” he agrees. “But— my dad always says that—that everything that happens, happens by design. That forces bigger than us conspire to make it happen, there’s nothing we can do about it, and—and that often something good can come out of the bad. That there’s a reason for all of it, you know?”

She stares at him with an odd expression on her face, her mouth pressed into a thin line. “I don’t believe that,” she says, drily. “There’s no such thing as destiny, and the awful bits are just that— awful.”

He shrugs. “I don’t know— something good _did_ come out of my mother leaving: my dad has Belle now. She loves both of us, and she’s amazing. I’m glad we have her.”

He starts sharing bits and pieces of what she’s like, of what his father is like, and it feels a little wrong to do so with the person keeping him from them, but at the same time a memory shared feels more _real_ , like it isn’t slipping away anymore, and Emma looks engaged, so much that soon both of them forget about what they were doing.

He doesn’t think they’ve ever talked _that_ much before now.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *panting* I made it! Honestly, these chapters would be up a little more quickly if I could just. stop changing everything every time I re-read them. @me why are you like this. sigh.  
>  Anyway, thank you very much for all the comments, I hope you'll enjoy this one as well <3<3

Baelfire is _not_ a morning person.

Both his dad and Belle are fully functional as soon as they are on their feet, and they don’t particularly like to sleep in. He, on the other hand, would probably sleep all morning if left unchecked, and he isn’t fully functional until he’s had something to eat – he supposes that the end of the world would wake him up just as well, but it’s only a theory.

Considering that there’s nothing preventing him from sleeping in now and sometimes he spends half the night up, he tends not to wake up too early since when he’s been with Emma.

He isn’t a big fan of the stairs, because walking down those when he’s still half-asleep comes with an high risk of injury, but this morning he once again manages to get to the dining room unscathed.

He’s heading towards the kitchen, his eyes still half-closed, when his brain apparently wakes up just enough to make him notice two tiny little details that don’t mash up well with the general picture: there are two people tied up, gagged and sat at the table. More accurately, there are _his mother_ and _Hook_ tied up, gagged and sat at the table.

What the hell.

“Mom?” he calls, instinctively. Her eyes widen as she recognizes him.

He quickly rubs his eyes, trying to make sure that he isn’t hallucinating or something, but no amount of scrubbing or blinking makes them go away. And if his eyes are having hallucinations, his ears are too, because he can hear them grunting and fighting against the restrains.

Okay, not an hallucination then. Probably.

He tries pinching himself, because there’s a good chance that that’s a dream, but no, that doesn’t work either.

Okay, then.

He takes a sharp breath, walking closer to them and taking the gag off both of them, before stepping right back – he isn’t stupid enough to untie them before he knows what the hell is going on here.

“Oh, Bae—” his mother immediately says, giving him a onceover, her eyes glassy. “You’ve grown so much.”

“Yeah,” he says, drily, taking another small step back and avoiding her eyes. “It happens to people when years pass.” A pause. “What the hell are you two doing here?”

Hook snorts. “Ask your magic friend,” he spits out. “ _She_ brought us here.”

His— oh, for god’s sake.

“Uh, Emma?” he calls, looking around and waiting for her to appear out of thin air, as per usual. It always gives him a mini heart-attack, no matter how mentally prepared he is. Still, he tries. “Emma, you there?”

She appears right next to him. “Yes?” she asks, like there’s nothing out of the ordinary.

“Okay, what’s going on here?”

She blinks at him, like she doesn’t understand where his question may be coming from. “That is your mother, isn’t she?” she asks, gesturing at the woman in question.

“Yes?” he says, carefully.

“And that’s Captain Hook?”

“Yes?”

“So it’s rather obvious what they’re doing here,” Emma states, raising her eyebrows.

He sighs. “Just—just pretend like I’m a complete idiot, alright?”

She snorts, making it clear with a simple look that there’s no need to _pretend_. “They’ve wronged you,” she explains, slowly. “They are here so that you can take your revenge however you wish.”

Oh.

Okay, in retrospect he probably should have seen that one coming.

“I’m his _mother_ ,” Milah protests, indignant.

Emma looks at her like she’s the most disgusting piece of trash to ever cross her path, and she makes her gag reappear with a simple gesture.

“Hey!” Hook protests, but he seems to be just smart enough to shut up under Emma’s glare.

And, well, Baelfire has to admit that _that’s_ a little satisfying. Just a bit.

“Uh— alright,” he says, trying to find a way to explain to Emma why that just isn’t okay. “That’s— okay, can you just send them back? I don’t want any revenge, alright?”

Emma seems baffled. Or, at least, her constipated version of ‘baffled’.

“They _kidnapped_ you,” she points out, and she sounds— pretty upset. Oh god, he shouldn’t have told her that story.

Hook opens his mouth, ready to protest or spew some bullshit about how they brought him back, so Baelfire is quick to answer, saving the idiot’s life in the process – knowing Emma, and considering that _he_ can barely listen to the guy without punching him straight in his dumb face, there’s a good chance that that bunch of excuses would lead to a slow and gruesome death; and Baelfire, petty as he may be at times, would still rather avoid a bloodbath, if possible.

“Yeah, and _you_ kidnapped _them_ ,” he points out. “So we are sort of— even.” Emma seems very sceptical. “Look, you can’t just kidnap people,” he resolves to say, laying it out as simply as he can. “And I haven’t really seen them in ages, so— I’m over it, okay?” _More or less_.

Emma stares at him for a few seconds, still looking unconvinced. If reasoning doesn’t work, he isn’t sure what exactly he could try.

In the end, she presses her mouth into a thin line. “Very well,” she says, drily.

A second later, both his mother and Hook have disappeared in a puff of smoke. Baelfire feels his shoulders relax.

He turns to Emma, looking for the right words to express that he sort of gets what she was going for, but this isn’t okay, when she disappears as well. Fantastic.

“Oh, come _on_ ,” he complains, rubbing his face in frustration with one hand. “Emma!” he calls, in the foolish hope that she’ll come right back.

Of course, she doesn’t even dream of it. Figures.

He spares a second to mourn his missed breakfast, then he decides to check out the kitchen, because it’d be just like her to hide right under his nose to make him feel dumb, and when he discovers that she isn’t there he briefly checks the rest of the ground floor, still calling out for her – to no avail, obviously.

Only after he has checked upstairs as well, in every single room, even knocking on the _locked_ ones and risking getting cursed in the process, he obviously finds her sitting in the dining room, right where he started looking.

Because she’s the worst and she just _had_ to mess with him. Obviously.

“Hey, look,” he says, a little out of breath, moving a chair to sit in front of her. She follows him with her eyes, her expression theatrically indifferent. “I get that you were trying to help, in your own way,” he continues. “But that’s just— not how you do things, okay? If you want to do something nice for somebody, you— I don’t know, you cook them breakfast, or you buy them _shoes_ , you don’t kidnap people.”

Emma blinks at him. “And to think that my initial idea was serving you their hearts on a silver plate,” she says, completely straight-faced.

He snorts, amused, automatically taking it as a joke. Apparently, it _was_ , because she offers a small smile in return.

 

The next morning, when he drags himself downstairs, breakfast is already waiting for him on the table.

 

 

-

 

 

“How does that work?”

Baelfire raises his eyes from his work, a little startled by her voice as she suddenly broke the silence, and he finds that Emma is staring intently at him.

“The spinning?” he asks, frowning. It isn’t exactly a prestigious job or anything, he keeps doing it for sentimental value, but what would she want with it? He’s pretty sure that if she wanted she could conjure out of thin air anything he could try to make with his hands.

“Yes,” Emma replies, setting aside her unfinished dreamcatcher and leaning forward a little.

“You— want me to teach you?” he says, slowly, feeling a sudden pull of protectiveness towards this thing that’s _his_ and that he probably isn’t supposed to share.

“Isn’t that what I just asked?”

He swallows, staring at her, and although she’s trying to look condescending he can read a note of genuine interest there.

Oh, what the hell.

“Sure,” he shrugs, gesturing for her to come closer. “Let’s try it.”

 

 

-

 

 

Baelfire is more than a little surprised when one day he hears an unfamiliar voice echoing through the walls of the castle, which is why he immediately drops what he’s doing to run downstairs.

What he finds is Emma dragging some poor bastard around, taking him to the dungeon, if he had to take a guess – there’s a dungeon, yes, she doesn’t use it much but he supposes it’s _intimidating_.

“Hey, hey, who’s that?” he asks, quickly, attracting the attention of both of them.

“A _thief_ ,” she spits out. “Trying to steal from _my_ garden.”

“Uh, okay, he was trying to steal _flowers_?”

Emma gives him her best unamused look. “They are not _just_ plants. And nobody steals from me, period.”

“Please, I just need—” the man tries to intervene, but she doesn’t let him finish.

“You shut up,” Emma says, drily.

“I’ve seen you give those plants to people,” Baelfire points out, before she can turn him into a toad.

“Of course. To those who _pay_ for them.”

“Make him a deal, then.”

“He tried to _steal_ from me!”

“Please, it’s not for me,” the guy intervenes again, and this time Emma, for some reason, lets him speak. “My wife is dying, and—and we have a child. I just didn’t want him to lose his mother so soon— please, if you can’t let me have it, let me at least go back to him.”

Emma stares at him for a few seconds, her expression blank and her mouth pressed in a thin line. “I don’t take kindly to thieves,” she states, coolly. “And I most certainly don’t make any deals with them.”

“Oh, come on,” Baelfire intervenes, sensing that this isn’t going to end well without a little push. Probably, it wouldn’t end well even if he tried to give her a proper _shove_ , but he’s going to try anyway. “You can’t just orphan a little kid.”

Emma’s eyes dart towards him, and he doesn’t think that she’s ever glared at him like that before. “That’s none of my business, Baelfire.”

They stare at each other for a few moments, and he’s settled on not looking away first. He just stares, silently, hoping that Emma will get the message and just do the right thing.

In the end, something in her expression shifts, and she pushes the thief away.

“What’s your name?” she asks, drily.

“Uh, Robin Hood,” he scrambles to answer, probably unsure of what exactly is going on. Baelfire isn’t too sure himself, but he’s carefully optimistic.

“Alright, _Robin Hood_ —” she echoes, with more than a little disdain. “I’ll let you have what you need, and _forget_ about what you tried to do, for a price.”

“Of course, of course,” he immediately agrees. “I don’t have much, but— anything you want. Thank you.”

Her expression doesn’t soften one bit. “I want a strand of your hair.”

Robin seems taken aback, and Baelfire is pretty stunned himself. That’s a new one.

“My— what for, if I may?” he asks, frowning.

Emma looks at him patronizingly. “There can be great power in the smallest of things,” she states.

Now, Baelfire doesn’t presume to know her _that_ well, but it definitely sounds like she’s pulling a seemingly profound phrase out of her ass to get away with giving the guy his flower for free. Not to mention that he has been reading quite a lot, and he’s fairly sure that he’s only ever seen hair mentioned in magical practices when it comes to making a potion tailored for a specific person. Nothing about the great power of small things, not that he can think of, at least.

He can barely fight off a grin as Emma takes his hair and Robin trails off with another ‘Thank you’ or two.

To her credit, Emma does make a show of trying to pocket the hair, but at that point he has stopped trying not to grin.

“Oh, don’t bother,” he says, dismissing her with a gesture. “I know that was a lie. You let him off for free.”

“I did not.” Her expression dares him to say the contrary.

And, well, Baelfire likes a good dare.

“You absolutely did,” he says. “And hey, that’s a good thing! Nothing to be ashamed of, I’m kinda proud of you.”

Emma’s mouth twitches oddly, but in the end she drops the hair and crosses her arms. “It’s important to make an example out of people,” she states, annoyed. “That was incredibly stupid of me, and if I start seeing people trying to steal my things and then trying to get away with it by spewing a sad story, I will kill them all. Painfully.”

“Whatever you say,” he grins.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's another chapter! Thank you all for the comments, I hope you will enjoy this one too <3

It’s been a while since Emma last asked him to give some blood.

Over time, he has gotten a little more used to the process, weird and creepy as it is, but it still is his least favourite part of the day.

Emma seems particularly— _cheerful_ might be an exaggeration, but she’s certainly in a good mood.

“I think I’m close,” she announces, when she notices that he has been staring. The fact that she’s willingly offering that piece of information, without him even _asking_ explicitly, is pretty telling.

“Close to…?” he prompts.

“ _Close_ to working this out,” she clarifies, with a brief gesture at the room.

Baelfire’s stomach takes a leap. “You mean the secret spell you are squeezing blood out of me for?”

“Exactly.”

For the first time in a while, he finds himself thinking that he might just be close to going home, after all.

“Still not telling me what all this is about?” he tries, because although he has come to know Emma as having bright spots, he doesn’t completely trust that whatever it is that she’s working on isn’t potentially dangerous. He’d feel better if he had the faintest notion of what it is that she’s trying to do.

“Not a word,” she says, her tone softer than usual. She quickly cures the cut on his palm, gently pushing his hand back towards him as she urges him to move towards the door. “Come on, get out, I have a lot of work to do.”

A few seconds later, and she has closed and locked the door behind him.

 

He spends the next few hours reading, considering that his only source of human interaction locked herself in a room to work on her mysterious spell. He has managed to get distracted enough that he has forgotten to check the time in a while, when his attention gets snatched away by what absolutely sounds like an explosion. Close enough that everything trembles for a few seconds.

Well, shit.

He drops the book, glancing at the ceiling just to make sure that it isn’t about to fall on his head, then he bolts out of the room, stopping in front of the locked door to the room where Emma was working. Sure enough, there’s smoke coming out of there.

Fantastic.

“Emma!” he calls, hitting the door as loudly as he can. “Hey, everything okay in there?”

No answer. Great.

Now, on one hand, she’s a witch, he knows that she could just conjure herself out of there. On the _other_ hand, he’s fairly sure that doing magic requires being _conscious_ , which she might not be at the moment. But she’s the Dark One, _technically_ she can’t die, right? Are there exceptions to that? He remembers how she came out of the fight with that dragon, he has proof that she can be wounded. But he should also probably take into account that the door is _locked_ , which means that he shouldn’t enter that room, which means that he doesn’t know what would happen if he tried to pick the lock.

So it’s either trying to help and risking an ancient curse, or waiting outside until she’s well enough to conjure herself out of the room, hoping that there isn’t anything in there that can actually kill her.

Well.

You’d think that at this point in his life he’d know himself better than trying to reason his way through something like this.

He’s always carrying around something to pick locks – Emma once told him that there’s enchanted furniture in there, and to be wary of wardrobes because they might try to eat him; now, she could have been screwing with him, but she has an excellent poker face and he’s not about to risk getting locked in a magic wardrobe, thank you very much –, so he’s soon crouched in front of the door, beginning to work on the lock.

He has barely gotten started when the door swings open and Emma comes out, on her own two feet, looking pretty displeased but unharmed.

“Oh, hey,” he blinks, quickly standing up and taking a few steps back as she walks out, slamming the door behind her with excessive force and coughing. “Are you okay?”

“No, I most certainly am _not_ ,” she hisses, glaring at the door as if it were its fault. He can’t remember ever seeing her that pissed, or upset. It’s unsettling.

Honestly, it’s been a while since he’s been _properly_ afraid of her, but right this second he wants nothing more than to get the hell out of her way and to apologize on behalf of the world, which dared pissing her off.

“What happened?” he asks, unsure if it’s a good idea. Either it prompts her to vent and blowing off some steam calms her down a little, or reminiscing just pisses her off more and this is the time that she finally snaps his neck with an hand motion.

“What do you _think_ happened?” she hisses, throwing an impressive glare at him. He might be mistaken, or it might have simply been the smoke, but her eyes look _glassy_. “It didn’t _work_.”

Before he can think of anything to say, she has disappeared. Great.

 

Although he still isn’t sure that she’s trying to do is a good – or even _neutral_ – thing for the world, and he has no way of knowing if she won’t tell him, she seemed very, _very_ upset, and the sight left him with his stomach unpleasantly tied in knots.

Therefore, for _both_ of their sakes, he decides to do his best to help.

Considering that he’d better not break into the room and fix the mess caused by the explosion, and that he surely can’t do anything to help her solve whatever problem she has with that spell, or maybe potion, whatever it is, he decides to work on her nerves.

Whenever he or his dad were upset, Belle would make tea, _because it’s calming, hot and effective_ , she said. He knows how to do it by himself, and he’s fairly sure that it could help, at least a little. It always worked with him, so it’s at the very least worth a try.

As soon as he’s done, for a crazy moment he contemplates walking around the castle, looking for her in person, but that would take too long, and there’s no guarantee that she’s still there anyway.

So he resolves to call out and hope she’ll hear.

“Emma!” he says, aloud, without too much expectation. In fact, she doesn’t show. He puffs. “Emma! Come, it’s an emergency, I’m on fire!” he tries again, without even that much emphasis, because he has his serious doubts that this will work if he isn’t _really_ on fire. She probably can tell.

Against all expectations, she appears in the kitchen a moment later, looking very displeased and not at all surprised when she says, evenly: “No, you aren’t.”

“No, I’m not,” he confirms, shrugging and offering an innocent grin. “ _But_ , here, I made this for you,” he adds, handing him the cup. “Tea, calms down the nerves. Belle always made it for me and Papa, it works, promise.”

She stares at him for a few moments, then her expression softens a little, and his stomach flips over to celebrate the victory.

“Thank you,” she says, accepting the cup with a small smile.

 

 

-

 

 

Baelfire wakes up with his own screams dying out in his head.

Blinking away a distorted memory of his father on the ground, men that he can’t remember the faces of standing over him, he grunts in frustration, pushing himself off the bed to check outside: it’s too _early_ , the sun is only now beginning to come up.

His head is still heavy with sleep, but the rest of his body is way too tense and alert from the nightmare for him to even consider lying back down, so he simply carries himself out of his bedroom, heading for the room of the night-time heart to hearts.

Surprisingly enough, Emma isn’t there.

It _is_ later than usual, he generally doesn’t go there this close to morning, but he was still expecting her to be there.

Since his chances at getting some more sleep haven’t magically increased, he decides to take a look around and see if he can find her. Turns out that Emma is downstairs, apparently about to head out.

“Uh, hey, ‘morning,” he calls. “Where are you going?”

Isn’t it a little insane to run errands this early in the morning?

Emma raises her eyes on him. “I’m going for a walk in the garden,” she explains. “Would you care to join me?”

Baelfire blinks. “Isn’t that— outside?”

She appears confused for a couple of seconds, her eyebrows furrowed as she studies him, as if looking for a clarification on his face. “That’s still my property,” she finally says, slowly. “Did you never get out? Since you came here?”

He can distinctly feel his face heat up, probably in embarrassment. “I thought it wasn’t allowed!” he protests.

It wasn’t really worth the _risk_.

And, alright, considering the friendly arrangement they got going on now he probably could have _asked_ , but— the truth is that it didn’t occur to him. So now he’s feeling pretty dumb.

Emma rolls her eyes with a benevolent grin. “Let’s get you some fresh air then, shall we?” she says, before conjuring a cloak on him, out of nowhere – it probably wouldn’t be sensible to walk out so underdressed, actually.

When fresh air hits him in the face, it’s a bit unsettling: used as he is to the smell of the castle, that the freezing wind seems to burn his lungs for the first bunch of minutes.

Emma’s garden is, to put it mildly, beautiful. In a slightly creepy way, maybe, but still.

The first time he walked through it he was pretty distracted by the giant castle and by the distinct possibility that both he and Belle would die a horrible death, whereas his father likely had already, but now that he’s simply taking a walk in the early morning light he notices that there’s a ridiculously wide variety of plants, from common trees to beautiful flowers.

He gets distracted by a bunch of blue flowers that look similar to roses, but as he moves closer Emma promptly grabs his arm.

“I wouldn’t touch those, if I were you,” she says, her tone neutral. “They are poisonous.”

Baelfire rolls his eyes, raising his hands to show that he got it and taking a step back for good measure. “Of course they are. Do you have normal flowers too or just those that can kill you if you get distracted? Is there a men-eating plant around here too?”

Emma offers a slight grin, amused. “ _These_ can be used for medicine, for your information. Or to kill people, yes, your choice. There _are_ normal flowers, and nothing will _eat_ you. There’s a plant that will try to strangle you, though, in the back. Do you want to see it?”

His father has always lamented that he’s too curious for his own good. What the hell, it’s unlikely that he’ll get _strangled_ by a plant with the Dark One to watch his back, right?

“If you promise not to let it kill me, of course,” he announces, lightly.

“On my life,” Emma replies, her tone perfectly serious and solemn. That makes the atmosphere uncomfortably tense for a few seconds, before she turns around and starts leading the way.

For once, her habit of randomly walking out of conversations comes in handy.

 

 

-

 

 

“So, what’s with those anyway?” Baelfire asks, staring at yet another dreamcatcher that Emma is making in the middle of the night. “I mean, I get wanting to pass the time since you don’t sleep, but wouldn’t you enjoy a bit of variety?”

Emma raises her eyes on him, setting down her work for a moment. “They have magical properties.”

“Yeah, you said. But what? Like, what’s so wonderful that you’d spend the rest of your life making dreamcatchers all night?”

He has been wondering for a while now, actually, and if at first asking too many questions felt like a danger zone, with the chance that she might just snap and obliterate him on the spot, now he’s confident enough that at most she’d stonewall him, or conjure herself out of the room.

Surprisingly enough, Emma does neither of those things. “They hold memories,” she says instead, after a long pause.

He blinks. “Memories?”

“Yes. They allow you to get them out of your head, destroy them if you like, or simply watch them. If you try hard enough, you can reach far down enough to bring to light things that you can’t seem to consciously remember.”

“Oh,” he lets out, still more than a little surprised at having actually received a straight answer. “That’s— weird, but probably useful.”

Emma nods, thoughtfully, her eyes landing on her lap before she raises them on his face once again. “Do you want to try?” she offers. “It doesn’t hurt.”

Baelfire has always been a little distrustful of magic, but he gets the feeling that Emma would be offended if he backed down after she offered all that information and to allow him around her dreamcatchers, so he decides to roll with it.

“Why not,” he shrugs, trying to look more at ease than he feels.

Emma grabs one of the dreamcatchers that she actually finished, holding it up in front of him. “Grab it,” she instructs. “And think very hard of a memory. I’ll do the rest.”

He decides to go for something not particularly meaningful, an happy evening like many others, with Belle and his dad sitting together: she was reading out loud, leaning against him as he looked at her like she’s most wonderful miracle to ever happen in his life.

It’s only a few seconds before he feels a weird tingle in his hand, the dreamcatcher lightens up with a pale white light, and the memory he was thinking of is suddenly displayed in front of him, Belle’s soft voice carrying in the silent room. 

“Woah,” he comments, surprised. “It works.”

“I said it would.” Emma’s eyes don’t leave the scene before them, whereas Baelfire soon turns away from it, his stomach tied in knots as nostalgia washes over him: he _misses_ the two of them, and seeing them projected in front of him like that reminds him of how much.

He doesn’t regret taking his father’s place, not for a second, and he doesn’t have it so bad, considering that Emma turned out to be friendlier than expected, but— he can’t wait to go home, and he can’t even know if that will _ever_ happen.

“You miss them,” Emma comments, startling him out of his thoughts. He raises his eyes on her, only to find that she has stopped paying any attention to the memory.

“Uh, yeah,” he says, letting go of the dreamcatcher and pulling back a bit. “They’re my family. When you leave home, you just— you miss it, you know?”

Emma’s jaw clenches. “No, I wouldn’t know.”

That catches him a bit by surprise, and he doesn’t say anything for a few seconds. “You— never had a family?” he decides to ask, carefully.

Her eyes drop on the ground for a moment, then she offers a small shrug. “I grew up an orphan,” she says, matter-of-factly. “I was alone my whole life.”

“Oh. I’m sorry,” he replies, and he _means_ it. His mother left, and that still hurts no matter how hard he tries to wash the sense of abandonment off him, but he’s always had his dad. He doesn’t want to think about what it’d be like to have been left by him too.

Emma stares at him for a few seconds, eyes locked with his and her expression unreadable. She sighs. “I’m trying to fix it,” she confesses. “I’m trying to find my family.”

He frowns. “How?”

Hasn’t she been alive for a very long time? Even if her parents were still around while she was growing up, wouldn’t they be dead by now? Unless they are immortal beings too.

“I found out that they are dead outlaws,” she explains. “They never had a chance to keep me.”

“I’m sorry, but how do you plan on fixing _that_?”

“By traveling back in time, of course,” she says, simply.

Baelfire has the feeling that his eyes are about to pop out of his head. “By traveling— is that a thing?”

“Not yet.”

Ah. “So _that’s_ what you’ve been trying to do?”

On one hand, it’s thankfully no evil masterplan to take over the world, on the _other_ hand— he’s no expert when it comes to magic, but isn’t it dangerous to mess with stuff like _time_? Wouldn’t changing things mess with— well, _everything_?

“Exactly,” she says, firmly. “I want to know what having a family feels like.”

Alright, that’s sad.

“You know, you could just make a new one, instead of blowing up your castle with weird spells,” he points out. “Wouldn’t that be easier?”

Emma smiles bitterly. “That’s never worked out very well for me. And I suppose it’d be worse _now_.”

He shrugs. “Not necessarily? I mean, you asked _anyone_ and they’d tell you that my dad is unworthy of anybody’s time. But I love him, and Belle loves him. It isn’t _impossible_ to find someone.”

“There’s a difference between being labelled a coward and being the Dark One, Baelfire,” she points out, a note of benevolence in her voice.

He snorts. “Nah, you’re not so bad, when you aren’t busy kidnapping people, you know? You can be _the Dark One_ and not make it such a bad thing, if you want.”

Emma blinks at him, evidently taken aback. “Thank you,” she says, softly.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> …yup, I am not dead! Sorry for the delay, there has been a _wonderful_ heatwave here, and with too much heat my productivity leaps out of the window looking for a colder place to start a new life in (I can’t blame her tbh), and then I had an exam to study for, so not much braining left for fandom activities. And this chapter needed a _lot_ of editing.  
>  But here I am, at last! I hope you will enjoy this <3

When he wakes up, it’s the middle of the day.

He and Emma had a long chat the previous night, during which she seemed eager to let him overshare everything he likes about his family, maybe to compensate for the frankly unbelievable amount of personal information that she brought to the plate.

He might have dreamt it all up, actually.

_Time travel_. To find her parents and make sure that they don’t die, so they can raise her and give her the family that she’s always wanted.

Okay.

When he drags himself down the stairs, feeling like he hasn’t slept a wink and his arms and legs are threatening a mutiny, he finds Emma sitting at the table, hands folded in front of her as she stares at nothing.

He just woke up, he _sincerely_ hopes that she isn’t freaking out because of the overshare, given that his brain isn’t equipped to deal with it right now.

“Good morning,” he says, gruffly, heading for the kitchen and ignoring the lack of a reply. Maybe it’s just one of those ‘I’m very deep into my thinking process, act like you don’t even see me’ days. He can get behind that, at least until he’s properly awake.

He should probably prepare lunch already, but he isn’t particularly hungry, so he just grabs some bread and pretends that it’s breakfast.

When he drops on a chair as well, Emma slowly lays her eyes on him, staring so intensely that he’s pretty sure she’s going to burn a hole in his skull.

“What?”

“Are you awake?” she asks, simply.

He rubs his eyes before gulping down a glass of water. “More or less.”

“I have something important to show you,” she announces, her tone perfectly serious.

God, can’t it just wait until— the _afternoon_ , at least?

“Okay, okay,” he nods, taking a deep breath and steadying himself on his seat. _Look alive, come on_. “I’m awake, promise.”

Emma nods, hesitating only for a second before pulling out a contract. To be precise, that’s _his_ contract.

He frowns. “What—?” Before he can ask, though, she has ripped it in half, her expression unreadable as she stares at him. Baelfire only blinks.

“You are free to go,” she announces, laying the two pieces of the contract down in front of him. He reaches for them, checking that that’s _actually_ his signature and not believing his eyes when it actually seems to be.

She’s— letting him go? Is she really telling him that he can go home?

“I have a horse ready for you outside,” Emma keeps talking, avoiding his eyes as he just keeps staring. “He knows where to take you, you just have to sit still.” That’s good, because the closest he’s ever come to horse riding is hopping on a sheep. “He’s yours to keep, if you want him. Otherwise, just let him go and he’ll come back here.”

He should probably be saying something.

The silence prolongs.

He should _definitely_ be saying something.

Finally, Emma’s eyes land on his face. She raises her eyebrows expectantly. “What are you still doing here?” she prompts. “I just said you can go.”

“Uh, I—” he stammers, his eyes darting from her to the ripped contract. “I thought you weren’t done?” he finally manages to get out.

Emma shrugs. “It isn’t working. There’s little sense in keeping you here while I keep failing. Perhaps another decade or two will be enough for me to figure out what it is that I’m doing wrong. Perhaps more, who knows.”

She’s letting him go. She’s _actually_ letting him go. He’s going back _home_ , to his family.

He’s having an hard time believing that this has nothing to do with their heart to heart the previous night. He feels a grin spreading on his face, and he doesn’t seem to be able to drop it.

“O—okay,” he says, quickly, standing up. “I’ll—I’ll just have to grab my—” He hasn’t even finished the sentence that his cloak has appeared in Emma’s hands, and she’s handing it to him.

“Is there anything else that you wish to take with you?” she asks, politely.

Baelfire has the sudden thought that this castle is so damn _big_ and empty, that Emma is an orphan who never had a family and she’s living in it all on her own. She’s letting him go, even though he’s pretty sure that she isn’t that fond of loneliness, considering the lengths that she’s gone to to try and find a way to get herself a family.

“Uh, no,” he replies.

“Very well,” she nods. “I’ll walk you to the door.”

He follows her, looking for something to say and coming up short. He’d want to thank her, but, really, isn’t it a little ridiculous to thank your captor for changing their mind and letting you go? Still, he wants to let her know that he appreciates it, her doing the right thing in spite of it being a set-back for her plan.

That’s obviously not what comes out.

“Promise me that you _won’t_ go back to the gloomy aesthetic with all the curtains sealed?” he blurts out. “Honestly, you were _so_ pale.”

That earns him a slight smile, as Emma shakes her head slightly. “I’ll see what I can do.”

He nods, hesitating by the door as he throws one last look at everything besides the woman in front of him. “Uh, maybe I could visit?” he finally offers, glancing at her. “I mean, if you don’t mind me coming to say hi—”

Emma seems surprised, but she’s quick to mask it. “I don’t see why you would want to.”

He raises his eyebrows. “For the pleasure of your company?”

She stares at him, and something flickers in her eyes for a moment, but she manages to keep up a neutral expression. “If you like.”

And yeah, okay, it sounds just like Emma to let him go and act pissed about it. He just hopes she’ll be in a better mood the next time he stops by.

God, he’s going _home_. He can’t wait to see his dad’s face, to hug him and see Belle, it feels like _ages_ since he’s last seen them—

“Alright, I’ll, uh, I’ll go now,” he says, hesitantly. “Bye.”

Emma nods, hands behind her back and chin high. “Farewell,” she says, drily. As soon as he has stepped away from the door, she closes it behind him.

 

 

As promised, the horse does all the work for him, the only thing that he needs to do is keeping himself up – which he manages to almost fail at, a couple of times.

It feels like an horribly long ride, before he sees the familiar houses in his village and his stomach twists on itself in anticipation for when he’ll be home.

He attracts more than a few stares from known faces that he’s weirdly thrilled to see again – he doesn’t know what they thought of his disappearance, but given that he’s grinning maniacally and greeting everyone that locks eyes with him they probably think that he has gone mad in his absence –, but he doesn’t stop to talk with anybody.

He finally jumps down the horse, pulling it along as he walks to his house as fast as possible.

When he knocks on the door, Belle is the one who answers.

“Oh my—” she lets out, staring at him with wide eyes. “Bae?”

“Yeah,” he grins, before pulling her into a very enthusiastic hug that she’s quick to reciprocate, wrapping her arms around his neck as he scoops her off her feet for a second.

“Oh, god, I was _so_ worried,” she lets out, her voice strangled. She then pulls away just enough to look at him in the eyes, reaching for his cheek. “Are you okay? How did you escape?”

“I’m fine, and I, uh, didn’t. She let me go,” he explains, taking a quick look inside: it seems that his dad isn’t home right now.

“She— really?” Belle whispers, surprised. “But why?”

He shrugs. “She’s not that bad, aside from the, uh, kidnapping people business. Where’s Papa?”

Belle opens her mouth to answers, then she closes it. Baelfire’s stomach sinks.

“Belle?” he prompts.

“Get inside, come on,” she says quickly.

He obeys, his mind immediately going through a very creative list of tragedies, and providing pre-emptive guilt because, whatever happened, he wasn’t _there_ for it.

“He wanted to get you back,” Belle starts explaining. “A few days ago, he went to see a seer, and he was— he came back a mess, talking of how he’d lose you, something about, oh, I think—the Dark One killing you?”

Okay, that sounds great. His dad _definitely_ didn’t freak out at that.

“We went to the fairies, to see if they could help, and they said they had a weapon that Rumple could use—”

“He has no chance against her!” he immediately protests, his heartrate speeding up. “ _Tell me_ he knows that.”

Belle stays silent for a moment. “That doesn’t mean he isn’t willing to try,” she finally says. “We agreed to think a proper plan through before we tried this, he was _here_ when I left— I just came back home, and he left a note, saying that he had to try and get you back.”

Shit. “So he’s— going up against Emma?” he asks, slowly. He wants to believe that she wouldn’t kill his father, but— if he’s going there to try and kill her, even if she _weren’t_ the Dark One, any normal person would be inclined to act in self-defence.

He has no chance.

Belle nods.

“Okay, we are stopping him,” Baelfire quickly announces, grabbing her hand and pulling her with him as he heads out. “Come on.”

“Do you remember the way back there?” she asks. “And— is that a horse?”

“Yeah, Emma gave it to me. _He_ should know the way back. Hopefully.”

Emma said that he’d find the way back on his own, right? So they bring him by the woods, and apparently Belle even knows how to ride, so she sits in front of him and gets it to move. Baelfire tells it to head to Emma’s castle, out loud, _just in case_ , and at that point he can only hope for the best.

 

 

They do get to the castle, even though it seems to take a decade, busy as Baelfire is worrying that he’ll arrive only to find his father already dead – or Emma dead, on the off-chance that his dad managed to get the upper hand; that’s not a scenario that he particularly likes either.

He jumps down the horse when it has barely stopped moving, and even though he pretty much falls to the ground as a result he pushes himself back up, running to the door and pushing it open without even trying to knock.

He arrives in the middle of a stand-off between Emma and his dad. Both alive and well. Emma looks mostly annoyed and as healthy as ever, his father is still standing and hasn’t been turned into a toad. That’s much better than he feared.

“Papa!” he calls, immediately causing him to turn around.

“Bae,” he breathes out, relief washing all over his face.

“As I’ve already told you,” Emma says, coolly. “Your son is free, I let him go.”

“She’s telling the truth, Papa.” He’s quick to walk up to them. “Let’s just go home, okay?”

“No, you don’t understand,” his dad mutters, shaking his head frantically. Baelfire has never seen him so rattled, he barely looks like himself. He raises his hand up, showing a— needle? “I need to do this. She’s going to kill you.”

“No, no—” Baelfire quickly says, deciding that the best course of action is stepping in between the two, turning his back on Emma and trying to gently push his father back. “Look, she wouldn’t hurt me, I promise—”

“You don’t _know_ ,” he hisses. “I talked to a seer, she said—”

“Maybe she saw wrong,” Baelfire tries, his tone edging a little towards desperation. He can stand in between the two of them, but _how_ is he supposed to convince his dad to let this go? “Let’s just go home, okay?”

His dad stares at him for a few moments, and Baelfire almost hopes that he will accept. “I can’t lose you,” he finally says, eyes filling with tears. Baelfire’s stomach twists unpleasantly. “I can’t, I _have_ to do this—”

“Papa, _wait_ —”

Next thing he knows, Baelfire is busy wrestling him for that needle, and he doesn’t know when exactly he got so strong – and he’s only now noticing that he’s standing without the help of a cane, what’s up with that? –, but it proves to be much more difficult than it should be. When his dad seems to be about to reach for Emma, Baelfire manages to grab his hand and push him back a little. A pinch to his palm later, and colour drains from his father’s face.

“Bae?” he creaks, looking at him like he’s just grown a second head.

He opens his mouth to answer, but he gets distracted by a tingling sensation in his hand. A moment later, he can’t feel anything anymore, and he barely has time to realize that he can’t seem to move his arm either before a sharp pain shoots through it, making him double over with a scream.

He’s pretty sure his father is reaching for him, trying to get his attention, Belle has run closer and Emma is trying to do something too, but he can’t find it in him to dwell on any of it when his vision starts going dark around the edges and another wave of pain rushes through his arm, spreading then everywhere else.

He tries to take a deep breath and ground himself, but that only seems to make the situation worse, as air gets stuck in his lungs and he chokes on it. The only thing that he can think about is that he’s completely sure that he’s dying.

Then the air somehow manages to rush out, and for a moment there everything seems to be working again. He barely has time to steady himself a little on his feet, realizing that he was holding onto his father like a crutch and that Emma’s hands are keeping him up from behind as well, when a new wave of pain washes through him, this time exploding in his head and not giving him any time to scream before everything goes black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear I tried to resist adding a Sleeping-Beauty-like scenario to this, but… Sleeping Beauty… Beauty And The Beast… I mean, if he is to be _a_ Beauty, why not make him _two_ Beauties, right? LOL.  
>  ~~I’m so sorry, Bae, I torture you because I love you, I promise. ~~~~~~


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe I'm almost done with this o.o

_Stupid, reckless boy_ , Emma keeps thinking, as she stands still, stunned and struggling to process what just happened, holding up the unconscious idiot without looking at him. This is the second time that she’s had to carry him, except today she didn’t intervene quickly enough – maybe they are _both_ stupid.

“Bae!” Rumpelstiltskin calls, his hands trembling and the damn needle abandoned to the ground as he tries to shake his son awake. “Bae!”

Emma’s hands itch to end him right then and there, because this is all his fault. His fault for seeking out the fairies – _Blue_ , this has her name written all over it –, for accepting to wield their weapon for them so that they wouldn’t have to get their hands dirty, his fault for being _stupid_ enough to think that he could take on _her_ — but he’s Baelfire’s dear father, and if he wasn’t happy when she kidnapped two people that he doesn’t even particularly like, she doubts that he’d forgive her killing his beloved dad, no matter how deserving he is of such a fate.

Therefore, she simply moves one hand and sends him to sleep, watching in silence as he crumbles to the ground, finally ridding her of his useless cries.

“Rumple!” Belle calls, immediately crutching next to him. “What did you do?!” she demands, looking ready to take on her if necessary. Baelfire mentioned that she has _spirit_.

“He’s fine, just asleep,” Emma explains, drily. “I need your help.”

She doesn’t waste any time before conjuring the four of them in her lab, where she has a table to lay Baelfire on and where she keeps most of her equipment. There are a lot of books as well, hopefully there will be no need to head to the library.

“Baelfire told me that you are an avid reader,” Emma explains, with a brief gesture to the books around them. “I need you to help me find something to save him,” she adds, ridding the table of anything in the way with a flicker of her hand and laying Baelfire on top of it. She then moves to find a box, knowing that the sooner she acts the better.

There aren’t many things that can seriously injure a Dark One, and Blue wouldn’t have given to Rumpelstiltskin anything that wouldn’t take her out of the way long enough for it to be convenient for the fairies as well. There’s a poison that they came up with and that they never named – because naming it would be too close to admitting that they messed with dark magic in the first place, and they can’t have that in their little world of hypocrisy, Blue would not stand for it, would she? – and that is known in human legends with the not too imaginative name of Black Death.

It progresses quickly, but removing the heart makes shutting the body down a longer process, which is the best that she can hope for at the moment.

“What—what’s happening to him?” Belle asks, hesitantly getting up from her husband’s side and approaching the table instead.

“Dark magic,” Emma says, drily. She needs to stick to a neutral tone, explaining the facts, compartmentalizing the feeling of dread making its way inside her as a voice in her head keeps insisting that there is absolutely no way to save him, that she should cut her losses, torture Rumpelstiltskin to death and make sure that the next time that she needs a spell ingredient she doesn’t fraternize with it.

After all, she has spent a lifetime trying to get her parents back and she still hasn’t done it, what makes her think that she can stop this now?

Found the box she needs, she makes sure to keep Baelfire asleep – it probably isn’t painless regardless, but it’s better if he isn’t conscious through any of it, and personally she’d much rather _not_ be forced to listen to his screams –, then she quickly removes his heart from his chest, making Belle jump in horror and surprise.

“What did you do that for?!” she demands, looking at her with wide eyes as she carefully puts it in the box.

“To buy us some time to figure this out,” Emma explains. She decides to freeze Baelfire’s body as it is: it might slow down the course of the magic, if they are lucky, although she isn’t holding out much hope. “I’m fairly sure it’s a poison known as the Black Death, strong enough to take a Dark One out for the amount of time it takes to fight it off. In a mortal—”

“There is no fighting it off,” Belle completes, quietly.

Emma nods. They need to get started, as quickly as possible.

“Will Rumple be alright?” Belle asks, and Emma barely resists the urge to snort.

“When he’ll wake up, the magic he borrowed to get some strength will be gone, although it will likely leave a mark. _He_ should be just fine,” she says, without bothering to mask the underlying accusation.

“He didn’t mean to hurt Bae,” Belle immediately rushes to defend him. “He would never—”

“But he did,” she cuts her off, coolly. “So let’s get to work, we must fix this.”

 

 

When Rumpelstiltskin wakes, from where Belle fixed him in a less uncomfortable position on the ground, they are still at a dead end: the fairies have never been particularly forward when it comes to their practice of dark magic, officially they don’t do it at all – if called out on it, they’d probably cite self-defence against the Dark One as extenuating circumstances, nevermind that this _wasn’t_ self-defence –, so it isn’t surprising that the most that they can find are some human reports on it. Nothing all that useful, nothing detailed enough to work on a cure.

The truth is, she isn’t even sure what they are looking for. Rumpelstiltskin waking up might be a good turning point.

“Rumple!” Belle calls, relieved, abandoning her book to rush by his side. He welcomes her in his arms, looking confused as he tries to understand where he is. When his eyes land on Baelfire, he stiffens.

“What did I do?” he asks, his voice thin.

“It was an accident,” Belle immediately assures, caressing his cheek. He isn’t even looking at her, though.

“What fairy did you speak to?” Emma demands, deciding that they’ve spent enough time coddling him. Both of them turn towards her, and Rumpelstiltskin stiffens even more, if possible.

“You—”

“ _I_ need an answer,” Emma cuts him off. “Was it Blue?”

“Rumple, she wants to help,” Belle intervenes. Emma isn’t sure what it is that gained her the woman’s favour, but she isn’t going to question it.

“She’s the one who _took_ him—”

“And yet it wasn’t me who did this to him,” Emma counters, drily. Guilt, shame and pain all wash over Rumpelstiltskin face, and it isn’t quite as satisfying as she would have thought. What does that help, exactly?

“She said her name was Blue, yes,” he supplies, after a pause, his eyes glued to the ground.

“Did she mention how to reverse the effects?” Emma asks, although she already knows the answer to that question: even if there’s a known cure, Blue would have had no reason to divulge it, not when it was to be used against her. Nevertheless, she prefers to ask.

“No, she said nothing about it.”

Emma takes a sharp breath, nodding. “You two keep looking,” she simply says, before conjuring herself out of there with a last glance at Baelfire.

 

 

Emma only ever knew exactly _one_ fairy that she truly liked. Clearly, she wasn’t suited for the role.

Tinkerbell found her as a lonely young woman with no significant ties to anybody, unwed, living off thieving. Emma did not appreciate being her charity case, but she thought she could get something out of it, maybe get her hands on some pixie dust to steal and sell, so she allowed Tinkerbell something resembling of friendship.

So much time has passed that at this point Emma isn’t sure how it happened, but she came to enjoy the fairy’s company, and she seemed to want nothing more than to bring some joy into her life. Tinkerbell was the one to introduce her to the power of dreamcatchers: she stole some pixie dust for her, to give her some magic to try and reach far down enough to find the answers she was looking for, about why she had been abandoned by the side of the road, as Emma was convinced that it’d give her some peace.

That is when she had the lifechanging revelation that her parents never wanted to leave her at all.

Magic helped her lift that one weight off her shoulders, so maybe it’d help her fix everything else. She just needed more powerful magic than what was required to use a dreamcatcher – and in the meantime, she could use the pixie dust she had left to keep watching her parents’ smiles and revel into the knowledge that they _loved_ her.

The most powerful magic user known was, she discovered, the Dark One. So that became her new objective.

Tinkerbell could not help her with that: when she went to meet her, she was greeted instead by Blue, of whom she had only heard from her friend before. Blue announced to have stripped her of her wings, and that Tinkerbell left soon after that, because of the humiliation, without revealing where she’d go.

(Emma can still feel her stomach boiling with rage at the same time as disappointment, hurt and guilt tightened in her chest.)

What she loathes the most about Blue is her pretence that she is always acting in someone else’s best interest, when she never is. She remembers her patronizing look of pity as she tried to dissuade her from her search of the Dark One, her declaration that she was merely trying to protect her.

Emma hates that she has to crawl to _her_ , of all people, for a solution.

“I know you are here,” she calls, feeling every last shred of her patience snapping as she forces herself not to pace around. Showing how agitated she is would likely be of no help. “Show yourself.”

Finally, Blue appears in front of her, with a forcibly polite expression on her face.

“The Dark One,” she acknowledges. “To what do I how the pleasure?”

“How do I stop it?” Emma simply asks.

“I don’t understand,” Blue plays dumb, with a forced smile.

She would _really_ love to snap her neck right now.

“You know what I’m talking about,” she insists, getting out the needle to show it to her.

Blue’s expression shifts to a slight grimace, if only for a moment. “My understanding was that it’d be used on you.”

“It wasn’t,” Emma says, drily. “How do I stop it? I won’t ask again.”

“Oh, you know I don’t respond well to threats,” she says, calmly. Emma has to keep reminding himself that killing such an important fairy really isn’t worth the headache. Particularly not now, when she has more important matters to tend to and no time to waste trying to deal with angry fairies trying to fight her.

“Believe me,” she says, keeping her tone pleasant. “If I _were_ threatening you, it’d be much more effective. I’m merely asking.” _For now_.

Blue presses her lips in a thin line. “There is nothing that can be done.”

“That’s a lie,” Emma replies, maybe a bit too forcefully.

“If there is, it is unknown to me and the other fairies,” she announces, gravely. “ _That_ is a last resort to be used only against grave threats. I’m afraid that whatever decency you have found within yourself has terrible timing. There is nothing to be done.”

Emma snorts, anger boiling in her stomach. “A grave threat,” she echoes. “I wasn’t even in your way, that isn’t a very good excuse for jumping at the occasion to get rid of me for a while.”

“I was just trying to help a desperate father in need,” Blue declares, and Emma isn’t sure if she’s terrible at playing innocent or if she merely knows her true nature all too well to buy it.

“Of course,” Emma snarls, stretching her fingers. “Always helping.” She pauses, clenching her jaw as she suffocates the urge to wrap her hands around her neck. “You’d better _hope_ I will find something,” she finally hisses. “Or _you_ will pay for it.”

Then, she conjures herself away from there.

 

 

As soon as she sees her appear, Belle moves a step forward.

“Did you find anything?” she asks, an unmistakable note of hopefulness in her voice. Baelfire mentioned that Belle is an optimist, that she likes to see the good in people as well as in dark situations. This is as dark as it can possibly get, and Emma feels the weight of it threatening to crush her.

“There is nothing to find,” she says, drily. This magic belongs to the fairies. She doesn’t think Blue was lying – she _knows_ wasn’t, she’s always had a good sense for lies –, and if not even those that created that damn poison know how to reverse the effects, there is no way that _they_ can find something before it’s too late.

“There _must_ be,” Rumpelstiltskin intervenes, forcefully. The evident desperation in his voice and the silent plead on his face does nothing but stirring Emma’s anger.

How _dare_ he reacts like this isn’t all his fault? What right does he have to look at her like she’s supposed to find a solution when _he_ is the one who created the problem?

“There _isn’t_ ,” she hisses. She should stop there. She doesn’t, as there’s no reason to. She’s keeping her back turned on Baelfire, but she knows that he’s there, that he can’t hear anything and that he won’t live to disapprove of her behaviour anyway. “And this is all _your_ fault,” she adds, moving closer as the need to make him die a slow a painful death grows stronger and stronger. “All _this_ is happening because _you_ little _insect_ tried to mess with forces bigger than you could ever—”

Before she can finish, Belle steps in between them, still leaving Emma a perfectly nice visual of Rumpelstiltskin’s crushed expression but not allowing her to proceed any further.

“Alright, alright, stop,” she says, firmly. “This isn’t helping Bae.”

Emma wants to laugh. Instead, she snaps.

“There is no _helping_ him!” she yells. “There’s only leaving him like _that_ to suffer until his body gives out _or_ crushing his heart now so we can get it over with.”

“I don’t believe that,” Belle insists, crossing her arms and looking at her straight in the eyes. “There’s _always_ a solution. And we are going to find it.”

Emma shakes her head, her eyes moving to Rumpelstiltskin, who is staring at the ground, his shoulders slouched like he’s carrying the weight of the world.

There is no saving Baelfire, she might as well take her revenge, draw what brief satisfaction she can from it and live with a truth that she has learnt a long time ago: people always leave. She knew the moment she let Baelfire walk through that door that he wouldn’t be back: people always had an habit of walking out of her life and never coming back, she couldn’t see it ending any differently when she willingly let him go.

She didn’t think he’d _die_ though, not so soon at least. Not in front of her.

For a second, she thinks that she might really push Belle aside, grab Rumpelstiltskin and drown that agonizing scream in her head with somebody else’s cries of pain. But just when she moves a step forward she remembers that single memory that Baelfire showed her through one of her dreamcatchers, the warmth in his voice when he talked about his family, how _badly_ he seemed to love them, how widely he smiled when thinking of them— she can’t do it.

She takes a sudden step back, like she’s been burned, and she barely has time to glance at Belle and Rumpelstiltskin’s confused expressions before conjuring herself out of there.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone buckle up and prepare for the full on Dramatic Fairytale Rescue Mode. ~~Yes, I’m having fun, ngl.~~

It shouldn’t really come as a surprise when her instinct brings her to the room where she always spends the night: that’s her favourite place to think, it’s like a refuge, which is why she has surprised herself greatly when she started welcoming Baelfire in it.

His presence didn’t make it any less safe, if anything it helped battling that loneliness that is always sitting in the back of her mind.

Looking around, it’s impossible not to notice the change: the spinning wheel that she never really used before is now moved to a comfortable position for him to pass the time with when he can’t sleep, there are a couple of books that he brought over from the library, because he doesn’t always want to spin, the armchair where he likes to sit is turned slightly towards hers, so that he can look at her better when they are talking— that room isn’t only hers anymore.

Emma liked not being alone much more than she’d ever care to admit – except she did admit it, or at least, she admitted to doing everything that she’s doing just because she wants to have her parents, and isn’t that as good as admitting that she doesn’t like being alone?

Before letting Baelfire go, she spent a lot of time replaying that memory, now trapped in the dreamcatcher that is still sitting on the armrest of her chair. She just kept looking at those two people that he seems to love so much, she listened to Belle’s voice reading softly for her family, she observed how warm the colours of the scene were, and she knew that it was only because that little snippet felt like home and safety to Baelfire.

She didn’t want him to go, but how could he want to stay? The only reason why he agreed to be trapped there with her was to save his father, and she merely went along with it to not have to go through the trouble of physically restraining Rumpelstiltskin, when his willing son would work just as nicely.

Of course he’d want to go back. She was making him miserable by keeping him there.

Somehow, she found that the thought of separating him from his family made her feel worse than the idea of being left alone again. Tearing apart his family in a distant hope of restoring hers – a family that never really was, if not for a few fleeting moments – seemed like an horrible price to pay.

No price has ever seemed particularly high when it was in the service of her ultimate goal: she wants a family, and she was willing to do _anything_ to get it.

Look at her now: she let go someone that can provide what she still believes to be a key ingredient, simply because she couldn’t bear for a mortal among many others to be unhappy because of her, she shouldered the thought that he’d never come back, refused to believe him when he said he _would_ — and now he’s dying, because he came chasing his foolish father into her castle and he somehow thought her deserving of his protection.

 _Everything that happens, happens by design_ , he said. _There’s a reason for all of it_.

For a second, she had almost started to believe it, but, try as she might, Emma can’t seem to find a good reason for this.

He doesn’t deserve to die. Much less to die such an horrible death. That she may deserve to _watch_ him die, that’s hardly up for debate, but he still doesn’t deserve to be collateral for her punishment. Which is laughable, under different circumstances she may even appreciate the irony, because she has never cared _that_ much for collateral.

(And that’s probably the whole point.)

The kindest thing to do would be to go back, grab his heart and crush it. Save him all the pain that he’s undoubtedly going through, send him somewhere better – Emma has never been too keen on believing in a blissfully happy place where people go when they die, she’s always thought it more likely to be a fairytale told to console those left behind, but right now she really hopes that there _is_ a heaven, or something close to it.

She should get up. If she isn’t going to find the courage to just end it, she should at least sit side by side with Belle and Rumpelstiltskin, accompanying them in their futile search for something to save him. She should at least play pretend.

Instead, she sinks in her chair and starts working on a new dreamcatcher. If she closes her eyes, she can almost pretend that it’s night and that there’s a chance that he’ll walk through that door any minute now.

 

 

She spends hours on that chair, at times even managing to distract herself enough that she forgets what is happening around her – what it is that she’s running from.

When it hits her all over again, for what seems like the millionth time, she feels a sudden rush of anger, and she throws the half-finished dreamcatcher in her hands against the wall, grunting in frustration and feeling the urge to _break_ something.

He’s _so_ stupid. She wishes she could just shake him awake and yell at his face for an hour or two, until he understands just how monumentally _stupid_ he is.

There was no need to intervene, no need to try and _protect_ her. Even if Rumpelstiltskin had managed to hit her – and that surely is a monumental ‘if’ –, she’s immortal. She would have survived. It would have hurt, yes, but _he_ is mortal, there’s no way he—

She freezes, her breath catching in her throat as she realizes the core of the problem: he’s _mortal_. If he weren’t, he would be safe. He’d definitely be out of it for a while, but he would recover. He took her place, now she can fix everything simply by returning the favour.

She exhales in relief as she takes out her dagger, observing her name written on it and _finally_ seeing how she can fix this. She almost wants to laugh.

She’s already standing, prepared to go and do it, when the full implication of it hits her: this means _dying_. The only way for her to turn him into the Dark One is giving her life in the process, there’s no working around it. And the most troubling part is that she’s so _ready_ to do it.

She has been trying to find a way to turn back time and get a family for so long, and now here she is, fully ready to give up her life just because these past hours have been the worst kind of hell.

Something in her dreads the thought of passing this curse to him, because he’s _good_ and that’s another thing that he doesn’t deserve, but— he’ll live. That’s what matters. That’s a million times better than letting him die and living with the knowledge that it was because of her.

She appears back in her lab, where Belle and Rumpelstiltskin are still relentlessly working, even though they look impossibly tired.

“Did you find something?” Belle asks, ever hopeful.

“Yes,” Emma says, drily. She puts them to sleep before they can fully react: she doesn’t need an audience, and she definitely isn’t about to ask for anybody’s permission.

She takes a deep breath, trying to steady herself before approaching Baelfire: he doesn’t look good, and freezing spell or not she can see that his hand is already covered in dark veins, and that likely isn’t the end of it.

In a minute, though, it won’t matter anymore.

She grabs the box with his heart, dropping the dagger on the table, next to his arm, and observing the lack of black spots. It’s the wholly red heart of someone who has never been willing to kill to get what they wanted, and she is about to condemn him to live with a curse that will easily make it seem like a valuable course of action.

“I’m sorry,” she says, quietly. “I’m sure you will learn how to manage it.” And she is: if _she_ was able to keep in check, to grow to care about him— he won’t forget his family, the curse can’t erase his love for them. He won’t be alone through this, he will have the chance to hold onto them to not slip away.

He deserves the opportunity to _try_. It’s a second chance at life, however that life might look like.

Now she just needs to say her goodbyes, although she’s confident he won’t hear any of it, and save him.

“For a moment there, I almost thought you were right,” she confesses, smiling slightly to herself and flexing her fingers. “I allowed myself to believe that the reason why I was abandoned, why I was alone, was that I was meant to try to create this spell— to live to this age and find you.” It sounds even _more_ stupid now that she’s saying it out loud. “That I really could let go of that idea, because I had found someone else that didn’t make me feel as lonely.” She draws in a sharp breath. “Then of course it occurred to me that you weren’t choosing to stay. So I let you go, because you made me grow a _conscience_ , apparently.” She snorts, half-way between amusement and self-deprecation. “I’m sorry for this,” she adds, tears swelling up in her eyes as she finally grabs his heart and stands to push it back in his chest. “And for everything else. If it was destiny that made us meet, it played an undeservingly cruel joke on you.”

With his heart back where it belongs, she’d better move fast, put the dagger in his hand and shove it in her chest as soon as she can. Yet, she hesitates for a moment, staring at his face and thinking that these are her last moments, she can barely breathe with how much she _hates_ this and, perhaps, she can allow herself a goodbye. A moment to indulge in something that could never have had a chance to be – because even if none of this had happened, he still would have died someday, loving him never had a chance of working out.

She bends over, feeling the seconds slipping away and hating every single one of them, whispering yet another apology before placing her lips on his. It’s only for a few seconds, but it’s enough: it’s been a while since the last time Emma has felt any form of light magic rush through her, yet she immediately recognizes the feeling.

She pulls away, if only slightly, and watches the wave of light that moves through the room, her brain simply stuck on a not too eloquent: _What the hell just happened?_

Actually, she is fairly sure that she _does_ know what happened, it’s just very hard to come to terms with. She’s the Dark One, how—?

“Emma…?” Baelfire calls, prompting her to turn his full attention back to him as he squints at her, looking more than a little confused, still too pale for her liking but _alive_.

“It’s alright,” she manages to get out. Her eyes are far from dry, she’s barely repressing the urge to start laughing – succumbing to hysterics wouldn’t be too dignified, but she’s dangerously close –, and she doesn’t even find it in her to remove her hand from his hair. “You are safe, go back to sleep.”

“Uhm, ‘kay,” he mumbles, closing his eyes once again.

“It wasn’t a type of poison,” Belle says, startling her into raising her eyes. Both Belle and Rumpelstiltskin seem a little shaken – she supposes that being magically jolted awake from a magical sleep would do that to a person –, but she’s smiling. “It was a curse. True Love’s Kiss can break any curse.”

Right. Of course she’d know.

Before anyone can say anything else, Emma conjures the two of them and their son in Baelfire’s room, gaining herself a moment of peace and quiet, away from their judgement. She has yet to fully process what just happened.

She just saved his life with True Love’s Kiss. That is one massive problem, and more than enough to make her want to run like hell in the opposite direction.

She could leave, go somewhere where they’d never find her. A mortal’s life isn’t that long, and passions are volatile, he _will_ find someone else, and she can go back to her original quest, make sure that she has a family—

_You know, you could just find a new family, instead of blowing up your castle with weird spells. Wouldn’t that be easier?_

Damn him. He’s going to die someday, and it’s going to break her heart. It seems way too logical to break his first.

Yet, somehow, she’s beginning to get the feeling that she’d have a much harder time surviving the latter than the former.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooo… at first I thought I’d break Emma’s curse too with the kiss, but I like the idea of the Dark Curse working a bit differently than the others, so I decided to grant myself the poetic licence, given that it’s an AU and all. The Dark Curse _is_ a curse, and therefore it is affected by True Love’s Kiss, but it’s also sort of sentient, and it won’t leave the host that easily if said host isn’t literally trying to push it out. And Emma, although she was willing to sacrifice her life (and her powers by extension) to save Baelfire, didn’t _actually_ want to get the curse out, keeping both her magic and Baelfire is the ideal solution for her.  
>  If I ever end up expanding this verse (which, knowing me, could be a big ‘if’ LOL), I’d probably get more into that, but I hope it makes some sort of sense even with this brief explanation.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Am I completely satisfied with this? Nope. Am I _ever_ going to be completely satisfied with it? Probably not, so here it is, a little later than I had planned but here nonetheless!  
>  Soooo. It’s over. I published a whole longfic. Wow. Yay me!  
>  Thank you all for the support, all your comments and kudos meant a lot to me while I banged my head against the keyword rewriting the same paragraphs for the fiftieth time, I hope you will enjoy this last chapter as much as the others <3<3 

It definitely isn’t the first time that he wakes up in his bed feeling like crap, yet this one takes the cake: he’s aching _everywhere_. How many hours did he sleep, exactly, and what was he doing last night?

It’s only when he notices his dad sleeping with his hand in his and his head on the side of the bed, Belle curled up in a chair next to him, that it all comes rushing back: how Emma let him go, how he had to immediately come back because his dad wanted to go up against her— then it gets pretty blurry, but he’s sure whatever happened wasn’t pleasant.

He needs to stop having close calls in this damn castle.

He carefully removes his hand from his father’s, not wanting to wake him, and that proves to have been a _great_ idea when he finally notices that Emma is standing in a dark corner, staring at him, and he flinches violently.

“My _god_ ,” he lets out, his heart promptly jumping in his throat. He glances at her, trying to convey with a single look how _annoying_ this habit of hers is, then he adds: “You know, that hasn’t gotten any less creepy over time.”

Emma walks closer, staring at him intently. “How are you feeling?”

“Like crap,” he supplies. “What the hell happened?”

Her jaw clenches. “Your father came here to attack me, and you somehow were under the impression that getting in the middle of that would be a sensible thing to do. He tried to hit me and he got to you instead.”

Oh, right. Now he sort of remembers it. That weird needle that somehow managed to hurt like a bitch. “Right. Sorry about that, he’s a good guy, just—” Just a bit overprotective, and he can easily see how this situation would lead to an escalation like that. It also seems like somehow ungrateful irony that it would happen the day that Emma decided to let him go. “Are you okay?” he asks, giving her a quick onceover. As far he remembers, he didn’t touch her, but considering that he’s missing some pieces he’d better make sure.

Emma’s eyebrows shoot up. “ _I_ am alright. He didn’t get to me, and even if he had, I would have survived. _You_ , on the other hand, were on your _deathbed_.”

Judging by how her tone is changing, even though she’s been gracefully following his lead and whispering the whole time, to avoid awakening his dad and Belle, it’s safe to say that she’s a little pissed off.

“Do you have _any_ idea how stupid that was?!”

Or maybe _more_ than a little.

“I survived, right?” he offers, without much else to say. He doesn’t even know what the hell was on that needle, but Emma’s reaction tells him that it wasn’t good. He spares a second to be glad that it didn’t get to her: that wouldn’t have been fun, especially because he would have had exactly no idea what to do about it.

“ _Barely_. By some _miracle_ ,” she hisses. “How can a mortal body hold so much stupidity, I really can’t—”

“Hey!” he protests, offended, and he forgets to regulate the volume, so his dad and Belle are quick to stir – probably he and Emma whisper-fighting the whole time didn’t help matters.

“Bae?” his dad calls, blinking as he tries to focus. “Bae! You’re awake!”

Next thing he knows, he’s being engulfed in a double hug that feels more like an attempt at suffocating him, Belle keeps pulling back to smile at him with tears of relief in her eyes, his dad keeps apologizing endlessly while crying all over his shoulder, and he catches a glimpse of Emma quietly leaving the room.

Okay, one thing at the time. Right now he’d like to make sure that his dad doesn’t have a stroke, first and foremost.

“Papa,” he calls, gently, patting his back as an invitation to let go for a moment. When he complies, Baelfire finds that his father won’t meet his eyes, and his stomach shrinks. “Come on, it’s fine. It was an accident, it’s okay.”

“I almost— I thought I had killed you,” he says, his voice breaking as tears gather in his eyes once again.

This situation definitely calls for another hug. Or two. Maybe ten, just to be sure.

Belle has pulled back a little, to give them a moment, but he can still feel her hand on his arm, holding a bit too tight for him to be under any illusions that she didn’t take quite a scare herself.

Exactly _how_ close did he come to dying? Because Emma seemed pretty freaked out too, and that’s _telling_.

“Really, Papa, it’s fine. It was an accident, I don’t blame you,” he insists, rubbing his back and taking a moment to breath him in. It’s been a while, after all. “And if anything, _I_ was the idiot who got in the middle of all that, as Emma kindly pointed out to me. It’s alright.”

“Did you two talk?” Belle asks, with an odd expression on her face.

His father hesitates a moment before giving him a squeeze and then pulling away, just enough to look at him in the eye.

“Uh, yeah?” Baelfire replies, unsure of what she means.

“Did she tell you how she saved you?” she prompts, when she understands that he doesn’t know what she’s hinting at.

“Not really, she was too busy insulting me,” he mumbles. A guy almost dies, and when he wakes up he gets showered in insults on top of it all. It would make anybody a little cranky.

Belle exchanges a look with his father, who appears to be more than a little uncomfortable, then she smiles benevolently.

“We were assuming that what was on that needle was some sort of poison,” she explains. “She must have figured out that it was actually a curse, and— she broke it.” He raises his eyebrows expectantly when she pauses, maybe thinking that he’d get it on his own. “With True Love’s Kiss,” Belle finally completes.

The statement hangs in the air, and Baelfire just gapes at her like an idiot.

Okay. He was dying and he was saved by True Love’s Kiss. That’s— very easy to process, sure. He shared True Love’s Kiss with the Dark One. Nothing weird in that statement.

His stomach is doing backflips, and they are not even _unhappy_ backflips, so there’s that.

The proverbial True Love’s Kiss for star-crossed lovers of legends. Totally acceptable.

“I— don’t know how to respond to that,” he says, realizing that he just completely shut down in the middle of a conversation.

“You two should probably talk,” Belle advises, squeezing his shoulder in encouragement.

His dad, on the other hand, is acting like he really wants to dissociate from this entire situation.

“Uh, Papa?” he calls. He isn’t sure what he’s asking for, but this probably isn’t an easy position for him to be in.

His dad sighs, nodding briefly before raising his eyes on him. “It might take some getting used to,” he finally says. “But she saved your life, after I endangered it. I’m happy if you are, son, and I’m just glad that you are okay. Anything else we can work with.”

“Thanks,” he says, smiling slightly before his eyes move to the open door. “Well, that is assuming that the two of us can make sense of this first,” he adds. Somehow he feels like Emma is going to have even _more_ trouble than him wrapping her head around this.

And he is having a _lot_ of trouble.

He cares about her, of that much is sure. Well, how could he not? Yes, there’s a very uncomfortable technicality in their relationship, and there’s a part of him that’s more than a little pissed at how much crap her plans to time travel put his dad and Belle through, but they have been oversharing and spending a lot of time together and taking care of each other one way or the other— people are dumb, they get attached easily.

And Emma is just a very lonely, weird person. He kind of wants her to be a little happy, for a change, and he wouldn’t mind being the one who helps with that.

Honestly, if he ever lost his dad, he isn’t sure he _wouldn’t_ lock himself in a dark room and try to come up with time travel to fix it as well.

Emma cares for him too, in her own way. And sometimes in a very traditional way, considering that this is the second time already that she swoops in to save his life.

He can also sort of admit to himself that he would have rushed back even if the one set on killing her hadn’t been his own father, because he doesn’t want her to get hurt, and that that has little to do with him being a human with a conscience and a lot to do with her being Emma.

( _True Love’s Kiss_. Seriously?)

“Stop worrying about making _sense_ of anything, just go talk to her,” Belle says, very unhelpfully, he might add. He _knows_ they are supposed to talk, it’s just— what the hell do you say? ‘Hey, thanks for saving my life with the magical True Love’s Kiss, I suppose we should get married now, after all we’ve already been living together for a while and it was working out fine’? Sure, it’d work splendidly.

Nevertheless, there’s no use in prolonging the inevitable, especially when Belle is staring at him like that. There’s a good chance that she’ll just drag him to her if he doesn’t get moving on his own.

“Alright, I’m going,” he announces, throwing his legs down the bed and finding that, although he’s still aching a lot, at least the room isn’t spinning around him. He’s confident that he can make it to Emma without falling over.

The first place he thinks of checking ends up being the right one as well.

“Isn’t that a night-time activity?” he asks, standing by the door as she raises her eyes from dreamcatcher number one million and something, probably.

“I can do it whenever I like,” she says, drily. Great to see that his near-death experience didn’t make her any less inclined to make things as hard as they can be.

But then again, he didn’t exactly get straight to the point either.

“So, uh, Belle told me,” he announces, stepping into the room and moving to sit at his usual spot. That, at least, gives some kind of familiarity to an entirely new situation.

True Love’s Kiss. Okay.

“Told you what?” she asks, neutrally, still not putting down her work.

Baelfire rolls his eyes. “Oh, come on, don’t make me do all the work here. You know what I’m talking about.”

“Very well,” Emma says, finally putting down the dreamcatcher and raising her eyes on him. “What of it?”

Yeah, good question. “Uh, I don’t know,” he mumbles, shifting uncomfortably on his seat. “I suppose that— means something?”

“It depends,” she comments thoughtfully.

“On what?”

“On you,” she points out, raising her eyebrows as if the reason why were _obvious_. When he keeps on being confused, she rolls her eyes, deciding to be merciful and explain. “The last time we properly spoke, you were walking out of my life. That is true regardless of whether you love me or not.”

Oh, oh, okay, what?

“I wasn’t— hold on a _second_ ,” he says, quickly, unsure if he should be laughing or crying or what else. “I wasn’t _walking out of your life_ ,” he clarifies. Is she being serious right now? Judging by her face she definitely is. “I was walking out of your _castle_. Has anyone ever told you that you are a little overdramatic?”

Emma raises her eyebrows, slightly offended. “I am _the Dark One_.”

“Does that mean that being overdramatic is part of the aesthetic or that people _don’t_ tell you that you are simply because they are afraid of being turned into toads?”

She opens her mouth to answer, then she closes it, a slight grin appearing on her face before she shakes her head slightly. “Unbelievable,” she mutters. He smiles a little too, glad to feel a bit of the tension breaking.

“How did you know that it’d work anyway?” he asks, when the silence seems to be stretching for a little too long.

_He_ hadn’t even admitted to himself that there were feelings there, how the hell did Emma manage to figure out that she loved him, he loved her back and that the magic kiss might actually work?

Emma shrugs. “I didn’t.”

“You— didn’t?”

“No. I had another plan, this was— an accident.”

He snorts. “You kissed me by _accident_?”

She gives him a very unamused look. “I kissed you on purpose without thinking that it’d be anything more than a simple goodbye.”

He shifts uncomfortably on his seat. “What were you even planning to do?” He realizes a little too late that, judging by the look on her face, he probably doesn’t want to know.

She hesitates, her eyes darting away from him before she draws a heavy sigh. Then, she takes out a very weird looking dagger with her name carved on it.

“I planned on turning you into the Dark One. To make you immortal,” she explains, giving him a tentative look, like she’s expecting him to reprimand her.

And, well, it doesn’t really sound like a particularly good idea, but neither does dying.

“That sounds a little extreme,” he comments, trying to keep his tone light.

“You were _dying_ ,” she retorts, perfectly serious. “I _needed_ extreme measures.”

“Uh, okay, so— two Dark Ones? Is that a thing?”

She smiles bitterly, shaking her head. “No, there can only be one.” The first thing he thinks is that she planned on giving him her powers. Then, she keeps going. “The curse is passed on by killing the predecessor. With this dagger.”

Oh. _Oh_. Hell, no.

“Are you _crazy_?!” he snaps, and she doesn’t even flinch, probably because she was expecting it.

“I have been told as much, yes,” she says, calmly. And no, now is definitely not the time for sarcasm.

“I’m serious, Emma, what the _hell_?!” he insists. “Were you just going to— shit, I would have woken up to your dead body and no idea what the hell happened, how— _how_ can that ever seem like a good idea?!”

God, the mental image is already enough to make him freak out.

“You were _dying_ ,” she empathises, as if he were being slow.

“I _get_ that, but— a life for a life? It’s— _insane_!”

Emma’s eyebrows shoot up to her hairline. “Is it? I was under the impression that I was talking to my personal human shield here,” she says, daring him with her eyes to come up with a counter point.

And, alright, she sort of has a point there, but—

“That’s different! I wasn’t planning on it, it just— _happened_. You thought it out, you should have realized that it wasn’t a good idea!”

There’s a good chance he wouldn’t have acted any differently had he had a little more time to think it through, but it’s probably best if he doesn’t start tearing his own argument apart.

“Oh, really?” she scoffs. “Tell me, which one of us here has a family, people who love them? Because it isn’t me.”

Yeah, what a nice way to drop a metaphorical bucket of freezing water right over his head.

There are a few moments of silence, in which she doesn’t drop her gaze, with her head held high like she didn’t just come up with one of the saddest things one could possibly say.

She might be a ridiculously powerful immortal witch, but god, does she need a hug or two.

“You _have_ a person who loves you too,” he points out, gently. “And you were planning on making the poor bastard responsible for your death.”

Emma’s prideful façade crumbles all at once, and she gives him a look that is probably the softest he’s ever seen on her face. The result is that he can mentally congratulate himself on shutting her the hell up, his stomach does a double backflip, and he’s suddenly longing to go over there and get a kiss that he’ll remember, this time.

“Me, the poor bastard is me,” he quickly adds, which earns him an amused scoff, effectively cutting a bit of the tension. “And I’m fairly sure I kiss a whole lot better while I’m awake. Just so you know.”

Emma smiles, automatically moving forward a little before sobering up and pulling back once again. “Are you sure?” she asks, and he can see clear as day that she’s just waiting for the moment he will come to his senses and reject her.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m sure,” he replies, keeping his tone light and a slight grin on his face. “It’s better when I’m awake.”

She snorts, amused, shaking her head a little before standing and walking up to him. Considering that she seems to be taking her sweet time, he decides to give an helping hand by pulling her down, which ends with Emma sitting half-way on his lap, her hands buried in his hair while he places his on her hips. They have a bit of a setback involving noses getting in the way, but they manage to work through it well enough that for a second there he forgets all the uncomfortable stuff that they should probably be talking about instead of making out. But hey, he almost died, _she_ almost died apparently, even if he wasn’t awake to see it, so he’d just like to take a minute to enjoy the taste of—

“Did you have tea?” he breathes out, amused, pulling his face away from hers just enough to look at her without it feeling hopelessly awkward.

“I was preoccupied,” she says, simply. “I thought I’d calm myself down.”

It’s funny because _he_ made her tea that one time when she blew up her lab, and he doesn’t think that she ever had it again. He’s feeling kind of smug that she felt the need to soothe herself with it because she was _that_ worried about him.

“That’s sweet,” he grins, giving her a quick peck on the lips just to highlight the point.

She rolls her eyes at him, pretty theatrically. “I find it a little ridiculous that, out of all the things that happened, the _tea_ is what resonated with you.”

“A weird guy for a weird lady, if you ask me it works,” he shrugs.

She pulls away slightly, an odd shadow passing over her face.

“Okay, what is it?” he prompts, because it’s probably best to get it out in the open right now, whatever it is. Who needs to be light-hearted for more than two minutes, right?

“I just believe I should highlight how unlikely this is to work out,” she says, bluntly. “There’s a whole list of reasons why this shouldn’t be happening in the first place.”

“Aren’t you a ray of sunshine,” he mumbles, pouting a little. “Okay, look,” he says, shifting slightly and realizing that this conversation would probably be a little less ridiculous if she climbed off his lap. But, well, she doesn’t seem to have any intention to, and he doesn’t think he really wants to complain. “This is a little weird. But we have survived talking to each other every day and sometimes night without ending up hating or killing each other, apparently we can’t decide who should die for whom here, and I, uh— I really think I’d miss you like crazy if I left for good. So I’d really like to enjoy it while we have it, even _if_ it doesn’t work out.”

She doesn’t seem too convinced, so he supposes that he should add a little side note there.

“And obviously if you don’t want to, uh, do _this_ —” He vaguely gestures at the two of them being tangled together. “That’s totally okay, but I’d still like to be friends. I mean, this place is _huge_ , I don’t like the idea of you being alone in here all the time.”

She raises her eyebrows. “I _was_ alone here for a very long time.”

“I bet it was _so_ much fun,” he comments, drily. She drops her eyes for a second, and he sighs. “My _point_ is— I care about you, and I’d like to see you happy. If that means trying to make _this_ work out in spite of everything, fantastic. If not— just don’t go back to brooding in the darkness, please?”

She snorts, bowing her head slightly to hide her smile. His stomach decides to go for the millionth backflip of the day, and he dares hoping that she’ll want to try this too, as messy as it’ll probably be.

“Alright,” she finally says, still smiling slightly. “I would very much like to— try this with you.”

His grin must look particularly idiotic right now, but he can’t even begin to care. “Great,” he says. “You and my dad should probably have a talk, though— work things out a bit.”

Emma doesn’t look too happy at the prospect, but she doesn’t protest.

“An apology would be a good start,” he suggests. She’s kind of allergic to those, but she nods, after a brief pause.

“Very well. I’ll talk things through with your father, I suppose we didn’t exactly start with the right foot.”

He raises his eyebrows. “You kidnapped him as an ingredient for your time traveling spell,” he reminds her. Which is actually another point that they should probably address. “And, about that—”

“Don’t worry,” she interrupts, her voice quivering slightly. “I’ll let it go.”

He can’t deny that he feels awfully relieved at that, half because _time traveling_ still feels like something that could cause a lot of trouble, half because she already fought a dragon and blew up her lab and god knows what else, he isn’t a fan of watching any more trial and error.

“I’ve been told that finding a new family is easier than reviving your old one, anyway,” she adds, offering a small smile as her fingers play with his hair. He could get used to this, honestly.

“You know, I think you’ve smiled more at me today than in the whole time I’ve been here,” he grins, leaning forward a little as an invitation.

She rolls her eyes, offering another small smile. “Must you ruin the moment?”

As she closes the remaining distance between them, he can’t really think of _anything_ that would ruin this.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of the [LLF Comment Project](https://longlivefeedback.tumblr.com/llfcommentproject), which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites and appreciates feedback, including: 
> 
>   * Short comments
>   * Long comments
>   * Questions
>   * “<3” as extra kudos
>   * Reader-reader interaction
> 

> 
> If you don’t want a reply, for any reason, feel free to sign your comment with “whisper” and I will appreciate it but not respond!


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